Serendipitous but likely useful information

 This is hugely serendipitous.  Public Views of Justice Ginsburg and Appointments to the Supreme Court, September 19, 2020 by Charles Franklin.   While the dateline of publication was the day after she died, the surveying was conducted in the two weeks of September 5th - 18th, up to the day of her death.

So far as any polls have legitimacy, this suggests about two thirds of Americans are fine with a Supreme Court Justice appointment occurring any time up to the day of the election.  

The question of holding hearings and a vote on confirming a new justice immediately became an issue with Justice Ginsburg’s death, as it had following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. In this poll, conducted in the days before Ginsburg’s death, a substantial majority of respondents of both parties say that if a vacancy occurred during the 2020 election year, the Senate should hold hearings on a nominee, with 67 percent saying hearings should be held and 32 percent saying they should not be held. Views on holding hearings do not vary much by partisanship, as shown in Table 3. This table will provide a baseline from before there was a vacancy against which to measure any future change in partisan views, if a nomination is made and considered.

Table 3: Hold hearings on a nominee in 2020, by party identification

Party ID	Hold hearings	Not hold hearings
Republican	68	31
Independent	71	28
Democrat	63	37

The numbers are, 1) somewhat higher than I would have anticipated, and 2) in a tighter range than I would have thought.  63-71 is pretty close on an otherwise potentially contentious issue.  And of course, people's actual beliefs when confronted with a  real choice are not infrequently inconsistent with those they hold when considering a topic in the abstract.  

Were you to survey Democrats now, I suspect far fewer than 63% would approve of appointing a Supreme Court Justice between now and the election.