According to a Pew Research Center poll, Brett Kavanaugh has the highest unfavorability ranking in data going back to 2005, when President George W. Bush picked John Roberts for chief justice. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Trump Supreme Court nominee faces widest partisan divide in recent history

More Americans oppose the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court than that of any other nominee in recent history, according to a poll from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

The survey , taken a week after President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh, found Americans deeply divided along partisan lines. While 41 percent of adults surveyed supported Kavanaugh’s confirmation, 36 percent opposed it, the highest unfavorability ranking in data going back to 2005, when President George W. Bush picked John Roberts for chief justice.


Opposition to Kavanaugh is even greater than that against Harriet Miers, the Bush nominee who, amid withering criticism from her own party, withdrew from the running less than a month after being nominated. And the partisan gap over Kavanaugh’s nomination is about twice as wide as it was for Roberts, the Pew survey found. Republicans and Republican-leaning adults were 57 percentage points more likely than Democrats to say the Senate should confirm Kavanaugh.

POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Democrats’ worry about the court’s direction is higher today than it was in November 2005, when Bush nominated Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. At the time, 38 percent of Democrats worried that Alito would shift the court too far right, compared with 53 percent of Democrats reacting to Kavanaugh today. The poll, conducted July 11-15 by telephone with 1,007 people nationwide, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

The data underscore the tough fight that Kavanaugh, who has served on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia since 2006, faces in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he wants the nominee confirmed by the beginning of the court’s next term, Oct. 1. Kavanaugh’s fate could hinge on the votes of four Democrats in conservative states, three of whom are up for reelection this year.

Kavanaugh’s paper trail — from his judicial decisions, as well as two years in the White House counsel’s office under Bush, more than three as Bush’s staff secretary and as a prosecutor for Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr — could amount to hundreds of pages, and both sides are preparing for high-dollar grass-roots and messaging campaigns.

The conservative Judicial Crisis Network has spent $3.8 million on ads targeting Democratic senators in conservative states. Demand Justice, a liberal coalition, has pledged to spend $5 million to block the nominee.