Polling suggest public largely split on replacing Ginsburg before the election

In the latest Emerson College/NewsNation national poll of likely voters: 

  When asked if they think the Senate should confirm a Supreme Court Justice replacement nominated by President Trump now or by whoever wins the presidential election: 48% said they should vote to confirm now and 46% said they should wait till after the January inauguration. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Republicans said they should vote now to confirm Trump’s nominee, and 82% of Democrats said they should wait till after the January inauguration. Independents were split: 45% said they should vote now to confirm Trump’s nominee, with 44% favoring to wait for the winner of the November election.

This is coming from a pollster that has a more realistic viewpoint of a Presidential election result, rather than the over the top media polling showing Joe Biden with double digit leads. Emerson has seen this race toggle between about a two point Biden lead and a six point Biden lead... which probably is fairly realistic at this point. So I would tend to believe this poll over any media based push poll that came out a day or two after the death.

We also had a poll that came out three days before Ginsburg passed that showed even a greater percentage of Americans felt that a USSC justice should be replaced by the sitting President (even close to an election). This is also not unlike 2016, when a majority of Americans disagreed with McConnell decision to not put the Merrick Garland nomination up for a vote.

Moreover, once you attach a name to the nomination, it no longer just becomes an "open seat" but also starts to represent the actual life of an American citizen caught on the political cross hairs of an angry minority Party. To some degree, the American public "will" take into consideration the qualification and (yes the feelings) of the nominee. If that nominee seems to have a valid claim for being on the high court, then should politics put a stop to someone's career advancement? We would never worry about who is President or when the next election is, when deciding who gets promoted to the CEO of some major corporation? Why does a Supreme Court candidate have to deal with that?

This was exactly some of the arguments that made people feel a little bad for Merrick Garland back in 2016. He seemed well respected and qualified for the position, and many felt like he was a victim of the political fall out. In fact, the general argument for not sitting Merrick Garland is exactly the same for not sitting Amy Barrett, which is that they are nothing like the person they are replacing (and that the person who was being replaced would have preferred someone different).

Many of us made the argument in 2016 that to a large degree the public had provided the Senate Majority to the Republicans and therefore McConnell had some justification for doing what he was doing. After all it was President Obama himself who was fond of telling Republicans who didn't get their way that "elections have consequences". Well one of Obama's biggest legacies was squandering a 60-40 Senate majority for Democrats and turning it into a Republican majority. The various elections that put McConnel in charge offered the consequences of no vote for Garland in 2016 and a likely vote for the likely nominee Barret in 2020. 

Nobody really believes that if the situation was reversed that Democrats wouldn't have done the exact same thing in both 2016 and 2020.