Two-thirds of Americans support Supreme Court term limits, poll finds
Published Date: 7/25/2022
Source: axios.com

67% of Americans favor term limits for Supreme Court justices, per a new poll from AP and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Driving the news: That includes 82% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans.


  • 43% of Americans also say they have "hardly any" confidence in the court — up from 27% three months ago.

The big picture: The poll comes soon after the Supreme Court issued a number of high-profile rulings, including overturning Roe v. Wade and expanding gun rights.

  • 53% of Americans disapprove of the court's decision to overturn Roe, while 30% approve and 16% say they hold neither opinion, the poll found.
  • There's a partisan divide over approval of the decision, with 63% of Republicans approving and 80% of Democrats disapproving.

State of play: There's also a stark partisan divide over overall confidence in the court, the poll found.

  • 64% of Democrats say they have "hardly any" confidence, up from 27% in April.
  • 31% have only some confidence and just 4% have a great deal of confidence — down from 17%.
  • For Republicans, confidence in the court has improved, with 34% saying they have a great deal of confidence, up from 21% in an April poll.
  • An additional 47% have only some confidence and 18% hardly any.

Zoom in: Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), have discussed placing term limits on Supreme Court justices in the wake of the Roe decision, Axios' Sophia Cai reports.

  • President Biden's Supreme Court commission has shown strong interest in imposing terms limits on justices, though Biden has not weighed in after the final report was released in December.

Go deeper... First Look: Ro Khanna to push Biden to back SCOTUS term limits

Methodology: The poll of 1,085 adults was conducted July 14-17 using NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is ±3.9 percentage points.