Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death creates the opportunity for a substantial shift in the ideological balance of the Supreme Court, but two thirds of people in the U.S. (66%) do not want to see the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion overturned, according to the latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Tracking poll. That number is nearly unchanged from an October 2019 NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll in which 64% of the public said they would not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned.
Under the surface, results among Democrats and Republicans have held stable from last year until now. Nearly all Democrats (86%) would not want to see Roe overturned, up slightly from 83% last year. Republicans are nearly evenly split, with 50% saying they want it to be overturned and 47% saying they do not want it to be overturned.
Views among independents have shifted more towards the left, with 71% saying they do not want to see Roe overturned, up from 65% last year.
Democrats continue to have more confidence than Republicans that the upcoming elections will be conducted in a fair and equal way: 50% of Democrats, 40% of independents, and 34% of Republicans say they are very or somewhat confident that the elections will be conducted fairly.
View the full results by partisanship below.
Read more about our polling methodology here.
