The Marquette Law School Poll, which I direct, conducts six polls each year that track approval of the court and ask for the public’s view on the outcome of cases. Our latest poll, conducted from July 22-29, yielded some fascinating results.
Overall, 47% of respondents said they approved of the job the Supreme Court is doing and 53% disapproved, a slight change from the court’s 46% approval rating in May. Unsurprisingly in our polarized times, approval of the court was strongly related to partisanship, with 74% of Republicans approving of the court’s performance, compared to 35% of independents and only 22% of Democrats. An even larger range of approval was seen across ideological lines, with approval at 80% among those who describe themselves as very conservative, declining to 72% among the somewhat conservative, then dropping to 42% among moderates, and falling to 17% among the somewhat liberal, and to a mere 5% among very liberal adults.
As SCOTUSblog readers are well aware, President Donald Trump and his administration have been a prominent part of the court’s merits and emergency dockets over the past term, and views of the court are also filtered through that lens. Among all adults, 55% say the court has almost always or most of the time ruled in favor of Trump or the administration, while 45% say it has done so only some of the time or almost never.
This relatively close divide also masks a substantial difference in perception by party identification. A majority of Republicans, 63%, say the court favors Trump only some of the time or almost never, while a larger majority of Democrats, 77%, think the court rules for Trump almost always or most of the time. Independents are about evenly divided, with 49% saying the court more often sides with Trump and 51% saying it mostly rules against him.
Interestingly, while the perception that the court supports Trump is negatively related to approval among independents and Democrats, it has no relationship with approval among Republicans. Independents and Democrats who think the court often sides against Trump are more approving of the court than those who think the court mostly sides with Trump. But for Republicans, approval of the court is exactly the same regardless of perception of the court’s support for the president.
Table 1: Approval of the court by how often it rules for Trump and by party
Among adults
Questions: Overall, how much do you approve or disapprove of the way the U.S. Supreme Court is handling its job? Since the beginning of his second term, how often do you think the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Trump administration in cases that have reached the court?
If general opinions such as partisanship, one’s ideology, and the court’s ruling for or against Trump matter for approval of the court, what about the more specific reactions to individual rulings? Here we find that, even though less than 50% of the public supports the court’s performance, at least a bare majority, and often substantial majorities, favored 11 of 13 recent court decisions, with the median decision favored by 62% of adults.
Although a majority of Democrats favored most of these rulings by the Supreme Court, as did a majority of Republicans, they didn’t entirely agree on which decisions they supported. A majority of Democrats favored an average of 8.1 of the 13 decisions, Republicans 7.9, and independents 7.4. A majority of both parties favored only three of these decisions: the decision to limit police access to cell phone locations (which was the most popular of the 13 decisions covered in the survey), gun possession for drug users, and preventing the president from removing a member of the Federal Reserve Board.
In other cases the partisan divide was a chasm; for example, on whether the Trump administration could restrict asylum seekers, 81% of Republicans favored the ruling while just 22% of Democrats did. Where Trump, or the Trump administration, is a party to the case, the partisan gap tends to be larger, although in some cases where the court ruled against the administration’s position sizable minorities of Republicans, 39% or more, still favored the decision. Examples include rejecting Trump’s appeal of the E. Jean Carroll verdict, and the administration’s position on tariffs and birthright citizenship. There are also cases with substantial Republican majority support and a sizable minority of Democrat support, as in state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports, as well as whether a state may ban conversion therapy.
Table 2: Favor court's decisions by party identification
Among adults. Lighter colors indicate more in favor of decision, darker more opposed.
So does agreement with specific opinions boost overall approval of the court at all? Yes, although the effect is modest in comparison to that of partisanship and ideology. The chart shows the results of a multivariate model of court approval which includes partisanship, ideology, perception of the court favoring the Trump administration, and the number of decisions for which the respondent favored the court’s ruling. The lines plot the probability the respondent approves of the court by party and by the number of decisions the respondent favored. The probability of approval rises from left to right as agreement with decisions increases, and does so for each partisan group, although less steeply among Republicans. This demonstrates that agreement with decisions matters, but the gaps between the lines shows that even perfect agreement with decisions cannot erase the large partisan divides in views of the court.
Partisanship and ideology are thus the dominant influences on approval of the court, and the prominence of cases involving the Trump administration in the October 2025 Term likely only strengthened that relationship. As recently as July 2021 there was virtually no partisan gap, with 58% of Republicans and 60% of Democrats approving of the court. Since then, partisanship has shaped public opinion much more strongly. As noted, the public is now starkly divided by the perception that the court either mostly rules for or mostly against the president. The individual decisions also play a role, especially among independents and Democrats, although less so among Republicans. Single decisions, even if prominent, such as the tariffs case, must therefore compete for influence against the more persistent forces of party, ideology, and perceived alignment with the Trump administration. And regardless of how the public views each individual decision’s outcome, the latter wins out.
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