A majority of Americans approve of the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action in the nation's colleges, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday reveals.
The poll of 937 adults, conducted Friday and Saturday, showed 52% of the respondents approve of the decision to outlaw race as a factor in college admissions, while 32% disapproved and 16% said they were unsure.
The survey's results were divided among party lines, with 75% of Republicans and 58% of independents approving of the ruling, while 26% of Democrats said they disapprove.
There were also deep divisions between racial groups on the court's ruling, with 60% of white people saying they approve of the decision, followed by 58% of the Asians surveyed.
Meanwhile, only 25% of the Black people surveyed said they approved of the court's ruling, while Hispanic people were split, with 40% approving and 40% disapproving.
Even though most agreed with the decision, Americans were still less likely to think Black or Hispanic students will have a fair chance to get into the college they choose, with two-thirds saying that white or Asian students have a fair chance. This compares to 47% who say Black students have a fair chance and 50% saying Hispanic students do.
The poll also showed that Americans were divided on the ruling in favor of an evangelical Christian website in her case determining whether First Amendment rights allow creative businesses to refuse to serve LGBTQ+ customers.
The survey also revealed that a majority of Americans, at 53%, believe the court is ruling on the basis of partisan political views, with 33% saying they believe the views are based on law, but 14% said they do not know.
Those views were driven by Democrats, at 76%, and independents at 51%, a large margin over the 36% of Republicans who said they believe the court's decisions come from political views.
The new margins are up from a January 2022 ABC News/Ipsos poll, when 38% of Americans believed the justices ruled based on their interpretation of the law, not their political views.
The poll has a margin of error plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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