Poll: More Americans Believe Christine Blasey Ford Than Brett Kavanaugh In Sexual Assault Allegation
As the historic Senate hearing at which both Christine Blasey Ford and the man she accuses of sexual assault, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh would testify, as Inquisitr reported, a new poll showed that more Americans believe Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh than accept the Supreme Court nominee’s denials. But the poll also showed that the largest group of Americans just are not sure.
According to the poll conducted by Marist College for PBS and National Public Radio, in answer to the question, “Who do you think is telling the truth about what happened at the party in high school: Christine Blasey Ford or Brett Kavanaugh?” 32 percent of the poll respondents answered “Ford,” while only 26 percent said that Kavanaugh was telling the truth.
But 42 percent answered the poll question by saying they were not sure who was telling the truth. As Fortune Magazine noted, while the numbers of Americans who believe Ford is not high, though higher than Kavanaugh’s, they still compare favorably to poll numbers from 27 years ago when Anita Hill accused Supreme Court then-nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.
An NBC News poll taken in 1991 showed that only 24 percent believed Hill’s allegations while 40 percent believed Thomas — but that number shifted by 1992 when Thomas was already confirmed to and seated on the court. By a year after the Hill hearings, 44 percent believed Hill while Thomas’s believability dropped to 34 percent, according to Time Magazine.
The poll also found that nearly six of every 10 Americans, 58 percent, said that they would follow Thursday’s hearing, NPR reported.
“The jury is still out in the court of public opinion about whether Judge Kavanaugh or Dr. Ford is more believable,” Lee Miringoff, Marist College polling director, told NPR. “If they determine she’s telling the truth, it’s a big problem for him.”
The poll revealed a significant divide between genders in the believability of Ford and Kavanaugh. Only 28 percent of men responded to the poll that they believed Ford, while 35 percent of women said that they believed her. The number of men who said that they believe Kavanaugh, however, was only about one in three, or 32 percent, while only one in five women, 20 percent, said that they believed Kavanaugh’s denials that he assaulted Ford at a teenage house party in the early 1980s.
But 45 percent of women said that they were not sure who to believe, while men were somewhat more certain, with 39 percent calling themselves unsure who to believe.
