Following last week’s controversial
U.S. Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare and gay marriage, voters believe more
strongly that individual states should have the right to turn their backs on
the federal courts.
A new Rasmussen Reports national
telephone survey finds that 33% of Likely U.S. Voters now believe that states
should have the right to ignore federal court rulings if their elected
officials agree with them. That’s up
nine points from 24% when we first asked this question in February. Just
over half (52%) disagree, down from 58% in the earlier survey. Fifteen percent
(15%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Perhaps even more disturbing is that
the voters who feel strongest about overriding the federal courts – Republicans
and conservatives - are those who traditionally have been the most supportive
of the Constitution and separation of powers. During the Obama years, however,
these voters have become increasingly suspicious and even hostile toward the
federal government.
Fifty percent (50%) of GOP voters
now believe states should have the right to ignore federal court rulings,
compared to just 22% of Democrats and 30% of voters not affiliated with either
major party. Interestingly, this represents a noticeable rise in support among
all three groups.
Fifty percent (50%) of conservative
voters share this view, but just 27% of moderates and 15% of liberals agree.
Voters
are closely divided in their opinions of both of last week’s major rulings. Negative
views of the Supreme Court are at their highest level in nearly nine years of
regular surveying. Positive opinions are also up to a
less dramatic three-year high.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters
was conducted on June 30-July 1, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of
sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field
work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse
Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Earlier this year, 26% of voters
told Rasmussen Reports that President
Obama should have the right to ignore federal court rulings if they are standing in the way of actions he feels are
important for the country. Forty-three percent (43%) of Democrats shared this
belief, while 81% of Republicans and 67% of unaffiliated voters disagreed.
The more a voter approves of Obama’s
performance, the more likely he or she is to say that states should not have
the right to ignore the federal courts.
Higher income voters are more likely
to oppose letting states ignore federal court rulings than those who earn less.
Support for ignoring the federal
courts is up among most demographic groups, however.
Most voters have long believed
that the
Supreme Court justices have their own political agenda, and
they still tend to feel that that agenda is more
liberal than conservative.
A plurality (47%) of voters
continues to believe the
federal government has too much influence over state governments, and 54% think states should have the right to opt out of
federal government programs that they don’t agree with. Even more (61%) think states should have the right to opt
out of federally mandated programs if the federal government doesn’t help pay
for them.
The Declaration of Independence, the
foundational document that Americans honor on the Fourth of July, says
that governments
derive their authority from the consent of the governed, but just 25% believe
that to be true of the federal government today.
Only
20% now consider the federal government a protector of individual liberty. Sixty
percent (60%) see the government as a threat to individual liberty instead.
Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.
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http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/june_2015/support_grows_for_states_to_ignore_the_federal_courts
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