To Kavanaugh or Not to Kavanaugh: That is the Polarizing Question

Understand

On October 6, 2018, the US Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh with the narrowest margin for a successful confirmation since 1881 and where the senators voted overwhelmingly along party lines.

• In this paper, we examine whether the political polarization in the Senate is reflected among the general public.
• To do so, we analyze the views of more than 128 thousand Twitter users.
• We show that users supporting or opposing Kavanaugh's nomination were generally using divergent hashtags, retweeting different Twitter accounts, and sharing links from different websites.