What Americans Think About Voting on Supreme Court Nominee

American voters are split over whether the Senate should hold a vote this year on President Obama's eventual nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, according to two new polls.

In a CBS poll released this morning, 47 percent of voters said they would like to see the next justice appointed by President Obama, while 46 percent said they would like to wait until a new president is elected in November. In a NBC/WSJ poll released Wednesday, 43 percent of respondents said the Senate should vote this year on a nominee while 42 percent think the matter should be decided by the next president.

In both polls, the divide broke strongly along partisan lines.

Eighty one percent of Democrats polled by NBC and 77 percent by CBS were in favor of Obama deciding the next Supreme Court justice. Those numbers were closely mirrored among Republicans, with over 80 percent in both polls preferring that the matter be settled after the election.

Some Republicans are pointing to the polls as justification for a strategy advocated by some leaders on Capitol Hill to block the president's eventual nominee.

Scalia died at a resort in West Texas last Saturday.

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