Who will replace Justice John Paul Stevens? While pundits, savants, and oracles across the SCOTUSphere pontificate and read Article III tea leaves, FantasySCOTUS.net conducted extensive and detailed polling to predict the next Justice. We have invited our nearly 5,000 members–who represent some of the closest and most ardent Court watchers–to weigh in on the vacancy, rank the candidates on the short list, and give their views on the potential nominees. We are still collecting data. Sign up for free at www.fantasyscotus.net and voice your opinion. This is the fourth in a series of posts breaking down this data, as we attempt to add some certainty to the vast amounts of uncertainty emanating from the penumbras of the upcoming vacancy.
As the Supreme Court has closed off the front doors at One First Street, it is time for us to close the page on speculation of who will take John Paul Stevens’ seat on the highest court. In this post, we will be comparing the numbers from our initial post on April 15 with our most recent data. Over the past month, we have received more votes, and our sample size has increased by almost 30%.
And the data shows, Elena Kagan FTW!!
In this post, we will be comparing the initial numbers for each candidate in the areas of favorability (on a scale of -10 to 10), and the percentage which they were picked as the top nominee, followed by their current favorability and top nominee percentages, and the favorability and top picks for the votes added since April 15.
| Nominee | Rating on 4/15 | Initial Top Pick % on 4/15 | Current Rating | Current Top Pick % | Votes After 4/15 Rating | Votes After 4/15 Top Pick % |
| Kagan | 2.99 | 54% (81) | 3.17 | 53% (110) | 3.65 | 51% (28) |
| Wood | 3.04 | 21% (32) | 3.06 | 22% (45) | 3.13 | 25% (14) |
| Garland | 1.84 | 10% (15) | 1.97 | 8% (17) | 2.33 | 4% (2) |
| Sunstein | 1.91 | 4% (6) | 2.06 | 5% (10) | 2.47 | 7% (4) |
| Clinton | -0.03 | 4% (6) | 0.08 | 3% (6) | 0.33 | 0 |
| Sullivan | 1.68 | 3% (5) | 1.76 | 2% (5) | 1.98 | 0 |
| Patrick | 0.64 | 2% (3) | 0.86 | 3% (7) | 1.47 | 7% (4) |
| Napolitano | 0.51 | 1% (2) | 0.79 | 2% (4) | 1.56 | 4% (2) |
Interestingly, many users changed their votes. Why did their votes change? And do we yield a different results? These bench marks are important to see whether or not the media frenzy in the intervening period has a substantial effect on the predictions. The results, after the jump at JoshBlackman.com.