Public Says President Obama Should Nominate Scalia's Replacement & Senate Should Consider The Nomination

Both Democratic and Republican officials have jumped to make their views known about Justice Scalia's replacement since his death. In fact, he hadn't even been dead for 24 hours before the political game had begun.

The Republicans want the next president to make the nomination to replace Scalia -- which means there would not be a new justice for at least a year. And the Senate Republican leadership has said they would refuse to consider any nomination made by President Obama. The Democrats believe just the opposite -- and Senate Democratic leadership says Obama should make a nomination and the Senate should seriously consider that nomination.

The question now is -- what does the general public believe. The Rasmussen Poll is the first to conduct a survey on that. They question 1,000 likely voters on February 15th and 16th, and their survey had a margin of error of 3 points.

The results are shown in the charts above. About 51% of the public says President Obama should make the nomination, while 43% say he shouldn't. And 53% say the Senate should not refuse to seriously consider that nomination, while only 35% say they should refuse. It doesn't look like obstruction is going to play in the GOP's favor.