A surprisingly muted reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action

In a marked contrast to last year’s Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, the response to its recent decision prohibiting the use of race as a factor in college admissions has been remarkably muted. The overall reason is clear: while voters wanted to preserve access to abortion by a margin of roughly 20 percentage points, they were willing by the same margin to accept the end of affirmative action.

A closer analysis of the data provides a fuller explanation: Black Americans, on whose behalf affirmative action was begun more than half a century ago and who might have been expected to support it — were at most ambivalent, as a recent Economist/YouGov survey reveals. To the surprise of many observers, they supported the Court by 44% to 36%, and the share who strongly approved of the decision exceeded those who strongly opposed it. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake offers a possible explanation: according to a pre-decision poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, only 1 in 5 Black respondents thought that they had personally benefitted from affirmative action in college admissions or hiring decisions. (This finding was replicated and even strengthened in the Economist/YouGov survey.

Consistent with expectations, registered voters backed the Court’s decision by even wider margins (60%-29%), and white Americans favored the decision by a margin of 42 points, 65% to 23%.

More surprising was the imbalance of intensity. Americans who “strongly” supported the decision outnumbered those strongly opposed, 46% to 18%. Also surprising was the response of young adults ages 18 to 29, who are more diverse and more liberal than the electorate as a whole and who have had the most recent experience with college admissions. Despite these collective traits, they backed the Court by almost 2 to 1 (49%-26%), and young adults who strongly supported the decision outnumbered those strongly opposed by 34% to 15%. Hispanics also supported the decision, 45% to 30%, with more than twice as many strongly approving as strongly disapproving.

Groups with large numbers of swing voters backed the Court by wide margins — moderates by 56% to 23%, independents by 57% to 24%, and suburban voters, a key battleground in contemporary elections, by 59% to 30%. For each of these groups, moreover, strong approval topped strong disapproval by more than 2 to 1 (for moderates, by more than 3 to 1).

In sum, the country’s half-century experiment with affirmative action failed to persuade a majority of Americans — or even a majority of those whom the policy was intended to benefit — that it was effective and appropriate. Universities employers — indeed the entire country — must now decide what to do next to advance the cause of equal opportunity for all, one of the nation’s most honored but never achieved principles.