Supreme Court

64% Say Miers Confirmation Likely

Survey of 600 Adults

October 19-20, 2005

Should Harriet Miers Be Confirmed?
Yes	30%
No	34%
Not Sure	36%
RasmussenReports.com

How Likely is it that Miers will be Confirmed?
Very Likely	28%
Somewhat Likely	36%
Not Very Likely	19%
Not at All Likely	2%
RasmussenReports.com

October 21, 2005--Public perceptions of Harriet Miers are a bit more pessimistic than they were last week but 64% of Americans still believe she is likely to be confirmed and serve on the United States Supreme Court. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 21% say confirmation is not very likely or not at all likely.

Confirmation is expected even though just 30% of Americans believe Miers should be confirmed. Thirty-four percent (34%) take the opposite view say oppose confirmation. The previous Rasmussen Reports survey found 32% in favor of confirmation and 28% opposed.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of Republicans say the President's nominee should be confirmed. That's down from 54% a week ago. Twenty percent (20%) of the GOP faithful oppose the nomination, up from 17% a week ago.

Republicans supported the nomination of Chief Justice John Roberts by a 64% to 11% margin.

Among Democrats. 40% say Miers should not be confirmed while 20% take the opposite view. Those numbers are very similar to the Democrats' view of Roberts.

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Thirty percent (30%) of Americans have a favorable opinion of Miers while 35% have an unfavorable opinion. Last week, those numbers were 28% favorable and 26% unfavorable. Only time will tell if the nine point rise in unfavorable opinions is a one-time shift or the beginning of a larger trend.

Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.

Rasmussen Reports was the nation's most accurate polling firm during the Presidential election and the only one to project both Bush and Kerry's vote total within half a percentage point of the actual outcome.

During Election 2004, RasmussenReports.com was also the top-ranked public opinion research site on the web. We had twice as many visitors as our nearest competitor and nearly as many as all competitors combined.

Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.

The telephone survey of 600 Adults was conducted by Rasmussen Reports October 12-13, 2005. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. 37% of survey respondents were Republican, 37% Democrat, and 26% unaffiliated (see Methodology)