For Immediate Release
Jul 6, 2005

Supreme Court Update

Dear Friends,

As we look ahead Supreme Court nomination process, I wanted to share with you a very relevant and timely piece of research from our recent Women's Monitor report, "Women at the Center of Political Change."

This national survey, which we released just a few weeks ago, shows that Republicans have failed to hold the support among women who helped re-elect Bush in 2004. One of the major reasons for this defection is the feeling among women voters that Republicans have overstepped their bounds on issues of privacy and government intrusion into personal family decisions. Republicans have lost women because they have failed to respect that women see themselves — not government or politicians — as the arbiter of family values.

The attached memo summarizes the findings of the study as they relate to this anti-intrusion message and the Supreme Court.

To: EMILY's List

From: Garin Hart Yang Research Group/The Feldman Group, Inc.

Re: EMILY's List Women's Monitor survey shows women hold strong views about government intrusion

Date: July 6, 2005

As the nation awaits the announcement of a new Supreme Court nominee, findings from EMILY's List's most recent Women's Monitor survey can provide instructive, important guidance for the leaders and lawmakers who will be involved in this historic process.

The data from this survey underscore that voters, especially women voters, overwhelmingly uphold the value of privacy for individuals and families, while rejecting government intrusion on issues involving religion and morality.

Republicans begin this process facing underlying skepticism from all voters — women in particular — that they will uphold the principals and priorities voters think should guide decision-making in this area.

If Republicans handle this Supreme Court nomination in a way that triggers the concerns reflected in these findings, they risk alienating important blocs of the women's electorate.

  • Issues involving religious and moral concerns should be outside the bounds of government and politics. By a nearly two-to-one margin, women voters believe that "questions of religion and morality should be left up to the individual, and it should not be the role of government to impose any particular religious or moral point of view on the country," (62 percent) rather than "government should be actively involved in protecting our traditional moral values — including the right to life, marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and the importance of religious faith in our society" (33 percent). Importantly, this preference for keeping government out of moral and religious issues is evident among a broad spectrum of the electorate, including women who identify themselves as politically independent (71 to 25 percent) and men (63 to 33 percent). Even women voters who say that abortion should be legal only in the most extreme cases are divided on the question of government morality, with fewer than half (49 percent) saying that government should impose religious or moral precepts and 44 percent saying that it should not.
  • Republicans have miscalculated voters' willingness to accept government intrusion on matters of morality and personal values. These data demonstrate that voters, particularly women, feel that Republicans have already overstepped their bounds on issues of privacy and government intrusion into families and personal morality. When asked how much they trust each party to handle "respecting the privacy of individuals and families," women voters place Republicans a full rating point behind Democrats on a ten-point scale, giving a 6.1 mean score to Democrats and a 5.1 mean score to Republicans. The GOP's relative shortcomings on this issue hold up strongly among independent women and among men.
  • Republicans carry a greater burden in terms of voters' comfort and confidence in selecting and advancing a Supreme Court nominee. Republicans begin this selection and confirmation process at a disadvantage in terms of voters' — especially women voters' — confidence. When asked how much they trust each party to "support the right kind of justices to serve on the Supreme Court," voters rate Democrats slightly higher (5.4) than Republicans (5.2). This schism is wider among women voters (5.6 Democrats, 5.2 Republicans), and wider still among independent women voters (5.4 Democrats, 4.8 Republicans).

These findings are taken from the EMILY's List Women's Monitor, conducted May 18 to 26, 2005, by Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group and The Feldman Group, Inc. The survey involved telephone interviews with 2007 women and 606 men, all registered voters The margin of error for the overall sample is ± 1.9 percent (±2.2 points among women).