In the latest Gallup Poll released on Thursday, Americans revealed that their confidence in the Supreme Court has reached the lowest point in recorded history amid a string of monumental decisions decided or to be decided this term.
Only 25% of participants said they had confidence in the high court, an 11-point drop from last year ,when it was 36%. Among Republicans, however, approval for the institution ticked up from 37% to 39% -— with approval among Democrats and independents collapsing.
The baseline 25% number is the lowest point since Gallup began tracking Americans' confidence in the court in 1973, with the previous low being 30% in June 2014.
That result comes as the Supreme Court is poised to overturn the 1973 precedent set in Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal nationwide, in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which is expected either on Friday or sometime next week.
Public backlash brewed after a draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito leaked to Politico last month, indicating the court would return the abortion issue to the states.
Threats against Supreme Court justices and their clerks followed; one man has been charged with the attempted murder of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The man, 26-year-old Nicholas John Roske, reportedly told authorities while in custody that he was upset over the leaked draft opinion, the BBC reported.
"Public confidence in the Supreme Court has been lower over the past 16 years than it was before," an analysis by Gallup read.
"Between 1973 and 2006, an average of 47% of U.S. adults were confident in the court. During this 33-year period, no fewer than four in 10 Americans expressed high confidence in the court in any survey, apart from a 39% reading in October 1991 taken during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings."
Gallup's poll of 1,015 U.S. adults was conducted June 1-20 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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