Just 1 in 4 people thinks Brett Kavanaugh was completely honest when he heatedly rebuffed charges Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s decades-old claim of assault and heavy drinking during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and Republicans and Democrats hold starkly divergent views of whether his sworn testimony to senators was credible, a poll released Friday showed.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey also found that the public was unimpressed by how major players handled the extraordinary battle, which culminated Oct. 6 in a near party-line confirmation of Kavanaugh by an exhausted Senate. President Donald Trump, Senate Republicans and Democrats and the FBI each earned approval from a third or less of the poll’s respondents.
Overall, the survey provides detail about how a deeply polarized nation regards the conduct and outcome of the searing Kavanaugh battle, just weeks before Nov. 6 midterm elections in which GOP control of the House and perhaps the Senate are at stake. Republicans hope partisan tensions heightened by the fight will drive conservative voters to the polls to counteract the white-hot enthusiasm already shown by Democrats motivated by their antipathy toward Trump.
Thirty-nine percent said they believe Kavanaugh was mostly honest but hiding something when he testified last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the drama’s most unforgettable day. Another 31 percent said he was largely lying, and 25 percent said he was totally truthful.
A breakdown of how people answered that question shows how stances over the bitter confirmation battle are deeply colored by people’s political allegiances and less so by gender.
Six in 10 Republicans, including roughly even proportions of men and women, said they think Kavanaugh was entirely truthful when he appeared before the Judiciary panel. They included Ricky Richards, who took the survey and agreed to explain his views in a subsequent interview.
Richards said he believed Kavanaugh, citing repeated FBI background checks that unearthed no wrongdoing, testimony from supportive witnesses and the body language of Kavanaugh and his wife at the crucial Judiciary session.
“He was angry, but he handled himself better than I would have,” said Richards, a 59-year-old engineering consultant from Clifton, Texas.
He said Ford’s testimony seemed “purely scripted,” and he faulted her for not recalling some details of what she says happened to her, which experts have said is common for trauma victims.
Fewer than 1 in 10 Democrats, men and women, said they think Kavanaugh was fully candid during his appearance. Just over half said he was mostly lying while the rest said he was largely truthful but was hiding something.
“It’s just the way he presented himself, the way he answered questions. He was so defensive,” said Barbara Heath, a 60-year-old Democrat and former factory worker from Springfield, Ohio. “To me, he was covering up a lot of things.”
Overall, 43 percent disapprove of Kavanaugh’s confirmation while 35 percent approve.
Forty percent of all men approve of Kavanaugh’s elevation to the high court, while only 30 percent of women do. Yet party identification washes much of that difference away: Around three-quarters of Republican men and women favor Kavanaugh’s confirmation, a view shared by only about 1 in 10 Democrats of both genders.
Americans are about evenly divided over whether the Judiciary panel treated Kavanaugh fairly. In contrast, 42 percent thought the committee was unfair to Ford while 30 percent said it was fair to her. Nearly two-thirds of college-educated women said Ford was treated unfairly, a potentially damaging finding for House Republicans defending competitive suburban districts in next month’s elections.
The poll also found that:
— The role played by Trump, who nominated Kavanaugh in July and criticized Ford and another accuser, was strongly or somewhat approved by 32 percent, about the same rating given to Senate Republicans. Senate Democrats won such approval from just 24 percent.
— Only 3 in 10 said the FBI did a good job. Trump hurriedly ordered the agency to perform a brief investigation of the sexual-harassment allegations against Kavanaugh and said it found no corroboration in a probe Democrats criticized as insufficient.
— Around 1 in 3 said that since Kavanaugh’s confirmation they have a lot of confidence in the Supreme Court. The rest have only some or hardly any confidence in the nation’s highest court.
— Eight in 10 Democrats, compared to 6 in 10 Republicans, said a Supreme Court nominee’s personal history and character are extremely or very important.
The AP-NORC poll was conducted Oct. 11-14 by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, with funding from The Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago. It involved interviews conducted in English and Spanish with 1,152 adults nationwide. Interviews were conducted online or by phone among members of NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population.
The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
(AP)
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7 Responses
FAKE NEWS:
I don’t believe this poll. The pollsters, who probably are Democrats, feed the wuestions in such a way that effect the results.
For example: I received a poll questionnaire about Trump from the Democratic Party with 10 questions all with feeding me with answers and if I had patience to read all options the last one said “I don’t have a problem Trump .
Polls can be faked very easily. I would love to see the actual questions and answer options.
1 in 4 may think that he didnt tell the entire truth but 95% believe that ms. Fraud ford told one entire big lie.
I take issue with the statement ” for not recalling some details of what she says happened to her, which experts have said is common for trauma victims.”
What “experts”? and have these “experts” examined Dr Ford or talking in general which would have no standing in this case.
If Dr Ford had come forward with her complaint a year ago when along with other women who had come forward after years of silence to finally prevent other women (and men) from being abused by their attackers (as was the case with other public figures ), I would have beleived her. But the manner in which she chose to come forward- via a letter to Mts Diane Feinstein, only ptoves a political agenda that taints her . She admits to following his career and had no problem with his position as White House Staff Secretary, or as U.S. Circuit judge for 12 years .
With the popularity of the MeToo movement I would have thought she would have come forward a year earlier, but waiting and then to whom she turned to, it was clearly a political agenda lacking evidence and corroboration. Hence it doesnt matter what people think or whose testimony they beleived.
America doesnt judge people guilty till proven innocent and neither should The Yeshiva World.
Only the leftists, Dems, Liberals were polled.
The Dems, Leftist, Liberals are of the firm belief and conviction that they may lie in ider to advance their “liberal” agenda.
Professor Ford was very truthfull, besides one lie “who was the perpetrator. But for the benefit of “liberalisim” one may lie.
Such “weasel words” as “completely honest” – which could mean anything. It could mean he knows who did it (not himself) but isn’t telling It could even means he knows how to prove she is lying but will not produce the proof because it would embarrass himself – as example, perhaps he could prove he was, let’s say, medically impotent or even “gay” at the time but is too embarrassed to come out.
And, in fact, it could even mean that the one who responded to the question had thought (incorrectly) that Kavanaugh denied ever drinking (confusing the idea of drinking with haveing sex, the latter being what he really denied.)
Take as example
> “It’s just the way he presented himself, the way he answered questions. He was so defensive,” said Barbara Heath, a 60-year-old Democrat and former factory worker from Springfield, Ohio. “To me, he was covering up a lot of things.”
Which question specifically? I remember the question, as example, where he was asked whether he ever discussed a certain topic with “any” employee from a certain law firm (it was a large firm with a lot of people coming and going). Of course he was “defensive” – the question was a vague and all-encompassing question that could mean anything. It could mean that if a check-out clerk at the store had mentioned the topic to him and he responded with a polite “yep”, that he had “discussed” the matter with an employee of the law firm, because possibly the check-out clerk at the store had a second job as janitor at the law office.
The Democrat senator asking the question was playing to the stupidity and prejudice of her audience with a flippant response to the affect “you don’t have to know who works there you just have to know who you spoke to”. Sickening tactic.
I don’t think he was entirely truthful about everything that was asked of him but I do think he was honest about this event. Their grilling of his yearbook was an attempt to smear his character and not to find the truth about this event. I don’t think he was honest about everything that he did as a teen but they had no right to ask him about it.
I think Ford was lying from beginning to end. I know victims tend not to remember details but she forgot that she built the second front door a year before she claimed she had sholom bayis problems trying to convince her husband to build the front door. Ten years ago she remembers it having happened when she was an older teen in the late 80s but now that she realized that based on his age and when he was in town, she suddenly remembers that it actually happened when she was a young teen in the early 80s. She has a terrible phobia of flying but she travels all the time by airplane.
Every detail of the story changed so many times that you couldn’t keep up.
Her trying-to-be-flirty/cutesy pose throughout the hearing was nauseating.
If they interviewed me I would’ve said that I didn’t think he was completely honest but from the results, it seems there wouldn’t have been a place for me to mention that I thought Ford was a big fraud.
I also think that Ford was lying. One way a liar mitigates their fear from lying is to deflect the question i.e not answer directly.
Feinstein: “How are you so sure that it was he?” Feinstein asked.
Rather than answering directly – Ford, a California-based psychology professor, laid out a detailed scientific explanation.
Ford answered: “The same way that I’m sure I’m talking to you right now,” Ford said. “Basic memory functions, and, also just the level of norepinephrine and epinephrine in the brain, that sort of, as you know, encodes– that neurotransmitter—encodes memories into the hippocampus, so the trauma-related experience is kind of locked there, whereas other details kind of drift.”
While is a cute answer. The answer should have been – I am sure because I remember that it was him. She couldn’t say that because it is not easy to lie. It is easy to give a true scientific explanation.