“I think there are a handful of Democrats who will vote for Kavanaugh, maybe more,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo Graham says Kavanaugh likely to get '55 or higher' for confirmation

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is likely to get the votes he needs for confirmation as long as he does as expected at Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham told Chris Wallace on Sunday morning on “Fox News Sunday.”

“If he does well at the hearing, I believe he’ll get 55 or higher,” the South Carolina Republican said, referencing the minimum, 50 votes, that would be needed for Kavanaugh’s confirmation.


“I think there are a handful of Democrats who will vote for Kavanaugh, maybe more,” Graham added.

Graham is one of 47 Republicans who have either openly voiced their support for Kavanaugh’s confirmation or indicated that they are likely to support it. Forty-one senators — all Democrats — have announced their opposition to his confirmation, according to recent numbers.

Among the 11 remaining senators who haven’t announced their support or opposition for Kavanaugh’s confirmation, three are Republicans and eight Democrats, including six Democrats up for reelection this fall. (The Senate has one vacancy.)

On the other side of the aisle, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, another member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued that Kavanaugh is the least popular Supreme Court candidate in decades and is merely appealing to President Donald Trump’s political goals.

“He is the most unpopular Supreme Court nominee in the last 40 years,” Durbin (D-Ill.) told Wallace. “The President has said, ‘I’m not going to put a man on the Supreme Court unless he overturns Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act.‘ Those ideas may be popular with the president, but not with the American people.”

Wallace rebuked Durbin’s claims on Kavanaugh’s unpopularity, questioning when popularity became the deciding factor for who takes a seat on the nation’s highest court. Wallace also argued that Trump never explicitly questioned an individual’s stances on abortion or Obamacare or used those views as a litmus test for whether he would nominate them to the Supreme Court.