Supreme Court fights usually motivate the GOP. Democrats hope the Ginsburg vacancy changes that.

For decades, Republicans have been more effective than Democrats at marshalling judicial issues to galvanize their voters and win elections.

Will the political dynamic flip this year?

The Supreme Court vacancy created by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death Friday has jolted the 2020 election, refocusing an already turbulent campaign on a judicial opening that could cement a conservative majority on the nation’s high court for a generation.

It’s a high-stakes situation reminiscent of the 2016 race, when a vacancy caused by the death of Antonin Scalia — and the resulting battle over the court’s ideological majority — is widely believed to have benefited Donald Trump’s campaign.

But Democrats argue that this year’s opening presents fundamentally different stakes for their electoral base, calling attention to a set of viscerally important issues like health care and abortion rights that they hope put Trump and the GOP on shaky political footing.

“There’s no question this will be an inflection point that shatters the conventional thinking about who cares about the court and who shows up for them,” said Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel for Demand Justice, a liberal group that focuses on the judiciary.

Kang said Demand Justice will spend $10 million on ads criticizing senators who want to push a Supreme Court nomination forward before the election, though he added the group has not yet decided which races it will target.

Many Democrats and Republicans caution that in a fast-evolving situation, it’s nearly impossible to accurately predict which side will benefit in a presidential race where the vast majority of voters long ago decided which candidate they would support. Most said the situation is fluid enough that the political outlook could change considerably just a week from now.

And GOP officials point out that their electoral base remains as energized as ever on judicial issues, a level of activism that could increase turnout and help in particular some of the party’s Senate candidates locked into tight races.

But polls indicate that, at least at the outset, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden carries a small advantage on who voters want to see appoint the next Supreme Court justice. A national Fox News poll released this month shows that 52% of likely voters trusted Biden over Trump to pick the next nominee, compared to 45% for Trump.

An August survey from the Pew Research Center, meanwhile, found 66% of Democrats say Supreme Court appointments are “very important” to their choice in the election, compared to 61% of Republicans.

In 2016, Pew reported a different dynamic, with 70% of Trump supporters saying an appointment was very important to them while 62% of Hillary Clinton supporters said so.

And a poll released Saturday from the Marquette University Law School found that among likely Biden voters, 59% said the next court appointment was “very important” to them, compared to 51% for Trump supporters.

There have also been signs that the looming Supreme Court fight is motivating donors on the left. The digital fundraising platform ActBlue said Sunday morning that it had processed $100 million in donations to Democratic candidates and organizations since 8 p.m. ET Friday, shortly after Ginsburg’s death was announced.

Historically, conservatives have been more keenly interested in judicial activism since the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which granted women the right to an abortion. And even as Democrats have become more active in Supreme Court causes since Trump’s election, the GOP says it still benefits from those fights.

Republicans credited the last Supreme Court nomination fight in 2018 with helping them expand their Senate majority in an otherwise challenging political climate, for instance.

“I think the Republicans, the core voters that were critical to us, were highly offended by the questioning of the presumption of innocence and the tactics,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said after the election, according to the Washington Examiner. “We were worried about lack of intensity on our side and I think the Kavanaugh fight certainly provided that. It was extremely helpful.”

Democrats counter that the Kavanaugh fight also motivated many of their voters to turn out, helping them sweep to a majority in the House. And many Senate races in 2018 also occurred in states like Missouri and Indiana that lean further to the right than the 2020 presidential battlegrounds.

Officials with the Biden campaign also point out that the Supreme Court vacancy is likely to refocus attention on a GOP lawsuit the court was set to hear in November on whether the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. A fight over repealing the heath care law before the 2018 midterm election became the central message of Democratic candidates that year, with many arguing that the GOP wanted to do away with guarantees that Americans with pre-existing conditions could still receive health insurance.

“Voters understand the next justice who goes on the court will decide whether or not they will still have protections for pre-existing conditions,” said one Biden aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly about campaign strategy. “That’s a fight that’s good for Democrats. It carried them to the House majority in 2018 and it is motivating voters in communities all over the country.”

This story has been updated with ActBlue fundraising figures.

This story was originally published September 19, 2020 at 5:48 PM with the headline "Supreme Court fights usually motivate the GOP. Democrats hope the Ginsburg vacancy changes that.."