New Bill of Rights

Rejected category · Regime-coded; both directions fail

Filibuster reform

Ending the filibuster drew 8% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats (Monmouth, 2022), and keeping it as is drew 19% of Democrats; every reading and every roll call has tracked Senate control.

Rejected 2026-08-18. A rejection is not a judgment that the issue doesn't matter — it is a judgment that the category cannot pass the full-spectrum test today. The evidence, the test, and the path back are below.

The proposal

The filibuster is not in the Constitution. It is a Senate rule: since 1975, Rule XXII has required three-fifths of senators — 60 votes — to end debate on most matters, and the threshold is changed in practice not by amending the rule but by a majority overruling the chair.12 Four distinct proposals share the name. Abolition — legislation passes by simple majority — is what pollsters ask about, and needs no amendment. Reform short of abolition would restore the “talking” filibuster or exempt categories of bills. A third would write simple-majority passage into the Constitution. A fourth inverts the rule: a supermajority to block a bill rather than 60 votes to advance one — symmetric on its face, never polled.

The evidence

The strongest evidence is a pair of roll calls, not a poll. In November 2013, the Senate established simple-majority cloture for most nominations by declining to sustain the chair, 48–52: the 48 were all Republicans, the 52 were 50 Democrats and 2 independents.3 In April 2017 the same procedure reached Supreme Court nominations, 48–52 again — the 48 now Democrats and independents, the 52 Republicans.4 Asked whether the Senate should “get rid of the filibuster entirely, keep it but reform how it can be used, or keep it as is with no changes,” 17% chose elimination — 8% of Republicans, 16% of independents, 30% of Democrats (Monmouth University, 2022).5

Democrats: 30% 30% Dem Republicans: 8% 8% Rep Independents: 16% 16% Ind bipartisan floor · 8% (Republicans)
Get rid of the filibuster entirely — Monmouth University, 2022

The same question read 10% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats in 2021 (Monmouth University); both waves ran under a Democratic Senate majority.6

  • Asked whether the filibuster is a good or bad thing, Republicans said good 68–32 and Democrats said bad 68–32 (Economist/YouGov, 2021) — a mirror image the pollster attributed to which party controls the chamber.7
  • “Changing the rules to eliminate the filibuster”: 66% of Democrats in favor, 74% of Republicans opposed (Rasmussen Reports, 2022).8
  • Advocacy polling: getting rid of “the loophole that allows a small minority of U.S. senators to block legislation that a majority of senators support” would have a positive impact, said 51% of Republicans, 49% of independents and 71% of Democrats (Navigator Research, Democratic-aligned, 2024) — anticipated impact, not support.9

The test it failed

We rejected the category on the symmetry test. Abolition and entrenchment each advantage whichever party holds the majority, and every recorded vote and every poll reading rotates with control. The 48–52 votes of 2013 and 2017, at an identical margin with the parties exactly exchanged, are the cleanest such case in our evidence; no appeal has ever drawn a cross-party majority.34 The one design that does not favor the majority of the moment — the inversion — has never been drafted or polled.

The polling corroborates rather than carries the finding. The bipartisan floor is 8% of Republicans (Monmouth University, 2022): Weak, the lowest we have measured. The mirror proposal fails too — keeping the filibuster “as is with no changes” drew 65% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats in the same survey.5 Both directions fail, on the same data.

  • Support tracks who holds power. Rasmussen’s elimination question drew 48% opposed under a Democratic majority and 44% under a Republican one (2022, 2025), a shift the pollster attributed to the change in control; the 2025 party breakdown is not published.810
  • Staleness. Every independent party breakdown dates from 2021–2022, under the opposite Senate majority.
  • No shared abuse. 57% of Republicans supported using the filibuster to stop a specific pending bill; 72% of Democrats opposed (Monmouth University, 2022).5 What one party describes as the abuse, the other describes as the protection.

The existential-problem test is open and did not decide this. One argument holds that a chamber which legislates only on 60 votes pushes lawmaking toward executive orders and budget procedures — cloture motions filed rose from 39 in the 94th Congress to 286 in the 119th;11 the other holds that the rule governs which laws pass, not whether the structure functions.

Framings we tested

One framing clears. Restoring the “talking” filibuster drew 57% of Republicans and 54% of Democrats (Economist/YouGov, 2021): Moderate.12 It does not rescue the category: it is not a threshold change but a procedural cost on the objecting senator, the Senate can adopt it by majority vote and declined to, 52–48, in January 2022,13 and in the Constitution it would be floor mechanics, which our drafting rule sends to Congress.

Making it harder to block legislation by threat alone drew 35% of Republicans in support and 34% opposed, against 60% of Democrats in favor (Economist/YouGov, 2021).12 The inversion is unpolled: no filibuster, cloture, or supermajority item appears in the three standing batteries of reform and amendment proposals we searched.14

The path back

The category reopens on a forward-looking question naming neither party and no pending bill, from an independent pollster with published crosstabs, testing the inversion rather than keep-or-kill — “a supermajority should be required to block a bill from receiving a vote” — at 45% or more in both parties, across two waves fielded under different Senate majorities. Two waves is the only way to separate a preference from a regime effect. A rules change drawing majorities of both caucuses would also count.

Sources

  1. Rule XXII has required “three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn” (60 votes) for cloture on most matters since 1975; the first cloture rule, in 1917, required two-thirds of senators voting — U.S. Senate, Filibuster and Cloture. ↩

  2. Cloture on a measure to amend the Senate rules requires two-thirds of those present and voting — 67 if all senators participate; the rules have instead been changed by a presiding officer’s ruling that a majority may invoke cloture, sustained on appeal by a majority — Standing Rules of the Senate, Rule XXII ¶2, U.S. Senate Manual, S. Doc. 110-1; CRS RL32684, “Changing Senate Rules or Procedures: The ‘Constitutional’ or ‘Nuclear’ Option”. ↩

  3. Roll Call 242, 113th Congress, Nov. 21, 2013, on the decision of the chair (nominations): 48 yea / 52 nay, chair not sustained; the 48 yeas Republicans, the 52 nays 50 Democrats and 2 independents — U.S. Senate. ↩ ↩2

  4. Roll Call 109, 115th Congress, April 6, 2017, on the decision of the chair (Supreme Court nominations): 48 yea / 52 nay, chair not sustained; the 48 yeas Democrats and independents, the 52 nays Republicans — U.S. Senate. ↩ ↩2

  5. “Get rid of the filibuster entirely, keep it but reform how it can be used, or keep it as is with no changes”: eliminate 17% / reform 35% / keep as is 43% / don’t know 5% — Republicans 8% / 21% / 65%, independents 16% / 39% / 42%, Democrats 30% / 44% / 19%; using the filibuster to stop a national election-guidelines bill: 44% support / 46% oppose, Republicans 57% support, Democrats 72% oppose; n=794 adults, Jan. 20–24, 2022 — Monmouth University Poll; full report PDF, Q22 crosstab p. 7. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. Same wording: keep as is 38% / reform 38% / eliminate 19% / don’t know 6% — Republicans 64% / 22% / 10%, independents 41% / 38% / 16%, Democrats 14% / 49% / 30%; n=800 adults, April 8–12, 2021 — Monmouth University Poll. ↩

  7. Filibuster a good or bad thing: Republicans 68% good / 32% bad, Democrats 32% good / 68% bad; “Those partisan positions always flip when the other party is in control because the rule often keeps the majority party from passing certain legislation”; n=1,500 adult citizens, May 22–25, 2021 — Economist/YouGov. ↩

  8. “Do you favor or oppose changing the rules to eliminate the filibuster?”: 40% support / 48% oppose / 12% unsure — 66% of Democrats support, 74% of Republicans oppose, 51% of unaffiliated voters oppose; n=1,000 likely voters, Jan. 10–11, 2022 — Rasmussen Reports. ↩ ↩2

  9. “Getting rid of the loophole that allows a small minority of U.S. senators to block legislation that a majority of senators support” would have a positive impact: 60% positive / 14% negative — Republicans 51% / 20%, independents 49% / 15%, Democrats 71% / 7%; 43% positive in May 2022; 61% said they understood the filibuster, 21% “very well”; n=1,000 registered voters plus oversamples, March 7–11, 2024; advocacy-commissioned — Navigator Research / Global Strategy Group. ↩

  10. Same wording: 39% support / 44% oppose / 16% not sure; “Opposition to ending the U.S. Senate’s filibuster rule has softened, now that Republicans hold the majority in the upper chamber of Congress”; party crosstabs not published; n=1,127 likely voters, Aug. 19–21, 2025 — Rasmussen Reports; question wording. ↩

  11. Cloture motions filed: 39 in the 94th Congress (1975–76); 336 in the 117th; 286 filed, 284 voted, 240 invoked in the 119th (2025–26) — U.S. Senate, Senate Action on Cloture Motions. ↩

  12. Return to a “talking” filibuster: 54% overall, 57% of Republicans, 54% of Democrats; make it harder to block legislation by threat alone: Republicans 35% support / 34% oppose, Democrats 60% in favor; voting-rights carve-out: 53% of Republicans opposed; n=1,500 adult citizens, March 27–30, 2021 — Economist/YouGov. ↩ ↩2

  13. Roll Call 10, 117th Congress, Jan. 19, 2022, on the decision of the chair relating to the legislative filibuster on H.R. 5746: 52 yea / 48 nay, chair sustained; the 52 were 50 Republicans and 2 Democrats, the 48 were 46 Democrats and 2 independents — U.S. Senate. ↩

  14. No filibuster, cloture, or supermajority item appears in the Pew survey of proposals to change the political system (Sept. 2023), the Cato/Morning Consult constitutional-amendment battery (n=2,253, June 25–26, 2026), or the University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation catalog of 200+ positions with bipartisan majority support — Pew Research Center; Newsweek / Cato / Morning Consult; UMD Program for Public Consultation. ↩

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