Public confidence in the Supreme Court has ticked up slightly since it plummeted after the nation’s highest court overturned federal abortion rights protections in 2022, according to a new survey.
The AP-NORC Research Center poll, unveiled Friday, found that 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. remain wary of the Supreme Court — chiefly driven by Democratic skepticism.
Roughly 67 percent of those surveyed said they had at least “some” confidence in the court — up from 56 percent in a poll conducted just after the decision three years ago upended the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. The same poll in 2020 — before the historic Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health case was decided — found 86 percent of people overall said they had confidence in the high court.
The most dramatic swings in public confidence over the three polls from 2020 to this year were seen on the Democratic side: About 80 percent said they had at least some confidence in the court in the 2020 poll, but that number plunged to 35 percent in 2022. The latest poll found about 43 percent of Democrats expressed confidence in the justices.
Meanwhile, Republicans surveyed in the latest poll were overwhelmingly more supportive of the court than in previous years, which has tracked conservative since President Trump appointed three justices to the bench during his first term.
About 90 percent of GOP respondents said that they have “some” or a “great deal of” confidence in the justices, showing only a slight shift from 2020 when about 95 percent of Republicans said the same.
Attitudes among independents has fluctuated some since 2020, but not as pointedly as the views among Democrats surveyed. More than three-quarters of independents polled in 2020 said they had “some” or a “great deal of” confidence in the Supreme Court. The number dipped to 52 percent in 2023 but bounced to 67 percent in the 2025 results.
The AP-NORC poll surveyed 1,347 adults across the country from July 10-14 and has a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points.
