Following a term in which the Supreme Court made consequential rulings on presidential immunity, government regulation of business, abortion and other issues, the court’s public image is little changed from last year.
Pew Research Center conducted this survey to assess the public’s attitudes about the Supreme Court. For this analysis, we surveyed 9,424 adults from July 1 to 7, 2024.
Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a group of people recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who have agreed to take surveys regularly. This kind of recruitment gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection. Surveys were conducted either online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other factors. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.
Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the survey methodology.
Fewer than half of Americans (47%) now express a favorable opinion of the court, while about half (51%) have an unfavorable view, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted July 1-7, 2024.
Opinions of the court have become slightly more positive since last year, when 44% of Americans had a favorable impression. However, favorable views of the Supreme Court remain close to that three-decade low. The court’s favorable rating is 23 percentage points lower than it was in August 2020.
How Democrats and Republicans see the Supreme Court
Just 24% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents view the Supreme Court favorably. That is unchanged since last year, and ties the court’s lowest favorable rating from either party in more than 30 years.
As recently as 2021 – before the court’s 2022 decision to overturn the federal right to abortion, as well as other controversial rulings – nearly two-thirds of Democrats had a favorable impression of the Supreme Court.
By contrast, Republicans are much more likely to view the court favorably, with 73% holding a positive opinion. Republicans’ opinions of the court have changed much less than Democrats’ views in recent years.
Perceptions of the Supreme Court’s ideology
Nearly half of Americans (48%) view the Supreme Court as conservative, while 42% see it as “middle of the road.” Only 7% describe the court as liberal.
Public perceptions of the Supreme Court’s ideology have not changed much in the past year. Since 2020, however, the share of Americans saying the court is conservative has increased 18 points. That year, 56% said the court was middle of the road, while 30% viewed the court as conservative and 12% said it was liberal.
Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to view the Supreme Court as conservative. Seven-in-ten Democrats say the court is conservative, but just three-in-ten Republicans say the same.
By comparison, Republicans are more than twice as likely as Democrats to say the court is middle of the road (59% vs. 25%).
Views of the Supreme Court’s power
Half of Americans say the Supreme Court has the right amount of power, while 42% say it has too much power. Just 6% say the court has too little power. These opinions have not changed much since 2023, when 51% of Americans said the court had the right amount of power and 40% said it had too much power.
Democrats are nearly three times as likely as Republicans (62% vs. 22%) to say the court has too much power. By contrast, when asked the same question in 2020, similar shares of Democrats (64%) and Republicans (66%) said the court had the right amount of power.
Demographic differences in views of the Supreme Court
Here’s a closer look at how different groups of Americans see the Supreme Court.
- More than half of women (53%) view the court unfavorably, while a similar share of men (52%) hold a favorable view.
- Two-thirds of Black adults express an unfavorable opinion of the court, compared with roughly half of Hispanic, Asian and White adults.
- About four-in-ten adults under 30 (37%) have a positive impression of the court. In contrast, 54% of those ages 50 and older say the same.
Differences within parties in views of the court
Democrats with lower levels of educational attainment view the Supreme Court more positively than those with higher levels of education. About a third of Democrats with some college or less education (29%) view the court favorably, compared with just 15% of Democrats with at least a bachelor’s degree.
The opposite is true among Republicans. About eight-in-ten Republicans with a postgraduate degree (81%) have a favorable opinion of the court. A smaller share of Republicans with a high school diploma or less education (69%) share this view.
Older Republicans continue to view the court more favorably than younger Republicans do. About eight-in-ten Republicans ages 50 and older (83%) see the court positively, while 63% of GOP adults under 50 say the same.
Supreme Court justices and their political views in court
When it comes to Supreme Court justices keeping their political views out of their decision-making, 18% of Americans say the justices are doing an excellent or good job of this, while 55% say they are doing an only fair or poor job.
Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to say the justices are not doing a good job keeping their personal politics out of their decisions.
About three-quarters of Democrats (73%) say justices are doing an only fair or poor job at keeping their views out of their judgments, while just 6% say they are doing an excellent or good job.
Republicans are more divided in these assessments: 32% say justices are doing an excellent or good job, while 39% say they are doing an only fair or poor job.
Overall, 87% of Americans say the justices should not bring their political views into decision-making; just 11% say they should. Comparable majorities of Democrats and Republicans say the justices should not bring personal politics into decisions.
Note: This is an update of a post originally published July 21, 2023, by Katy Lin and Carroll Doherty. Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the survey methodology.