Poll: 54% Back Alito's Confirmation

A Washington Post-ABC News poll shows majority support for the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court:

A majority of Americans now support the confirmation of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court to fill the seat of retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey found that 54 percent say the Senate should confirm Alito, while 28 percent say he should not be approved. That marks a modest increase in public support for Alito since November, when 49 percent said he should be confirmed and 29 percent said he should not. In both surveys, about one in five Americans said they did not know enough about the nominee to have an opinion.

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The new poll found some evidence that the abortion issue plays an important but not decisive role in shaping public perceptions of Alito. Although his current views on abortion are not publicly known, memos that he wrote two decades ago, while he was a lawyer in the Reagan administration's Justice Department, indicated that he opposed Roe v. Wade , the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

Six in 10 in the survey said they hope Alito would vote to uphold Roe, while more than a third said they want him to vote to overturn it. But a majority of the respondents -- 55 percent -- said Alito's stand on abortion was only of limited importance to them. Seventeen percent said it was "extremely important," while 26 percent said it was "very important."