WASHINGTON _ An election year featuring the impeachment of the president, the worst pandemic in a century, a catastrophic recession and racial unrest has left the race for the White House largely in the same place: Joe Biden holding a steady lead over Donald Trump nationally and in key battleground states.
If a Supreme Court fight suddenly upends the contest, it would prove the exception.
In the days since Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, Republicans and Democrats alike have rushed to declare that the looming battle over the newly opened Supreme Court seat will prove politically beneficial, confident it will galvanize their base and offer a critical motivational boost in the presidential campaign's final weeks.
But the likelier outcome, some operatives from both parties say, is a judicial showdown that will draw near-universal attention but fail to shift the broad contours of a race that hasn't changed much even in the face of an onslaught of historic events.
"The Supreme Court tends to be overrated as a campaign issue because the people motivated by it are certain to vote and certain who they are voting for," said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster. "If you believe both sides are 100% revved up right now, then it follows from that the impact is going to be minimum to nil."
These strategists say the dynamic might be different in down-ballot races, but not in a presidential contest where voters have already heard plenty from both campaigns and have deeply ingrained opinions about the current president.
Even the race's few remaining undecided voters are unlikely to be swayed by the vacancy, at least compared to the ongoing pandemic or economic recovery.
"Undecided voters by their very nature tend to be non-ideological and consistently moderate," said Steve Israel, former Democratic congressman from New York. "And my assumption would be they're going to be talking about whether their kids can go to school or whether more businesses are going to be boarded up as a result of COVID-19."
The court fight will have "very little bearing on the race," added Israel.
Trump said that he would announce his nominee to replace Ginsburg on Saturday, eight days after the former justice died and little more than five weeks before Election Day. Amy Coney Barrett, a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in Chicago, and Barbara Lagoa, a Miami-born judge who was the first Hispanic woman to serve on Florida's Supreme Court, appear to be the two favorites.
Senate Republicans, who hold a 53-seat majority, are expected to quickly begin considering the nominee, with only two of their members _ Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska _ so far saying the vote on a Ginsburg replacement should happen after the election.
The legislative fight that follows will be of visceral important to many voters, with sensitive subjects like abortion rights and health care likely to move to the forefront during the weekslong confirmation process. At stake is the chance for conservatives to cement an ideological majority on the nation's highest court for a generation.
The vacancy has already produced a fundraising bonanza for Democrats, whose donors have rushed to contribute millions of dollars to even long-shot Senate candidates in red states since the news of Ginsburg's passing. It's an indication of how the stakes over control of the upper chamber have been raised dramatically in a period of days.
And yet, many recent pivotal events have not significantly altered public opinion about the president. Trump's approval numbers rose slightly after he became only the third president in history to be impeached, but the bump in support faded quickly.
More recently, allegations from a story in The Atlantic that the president mocked dead members of the armed services, revelations from journalist Bob Woodward that he deliberately downplayed the pandemic when it began, and a steady stream of positive economic news since the pandemic-induced recession began have changed few minds, according to polls that have shown a steady race since the summer began.
Even the COVID-19 pandemic _ a historic global event that has affected nearly everyone's daily life and killed more than 200,000 Americans _ only increased Biden's edge by a relatively modest amount in a country where tens of millions of voters long ago decided to vote for or against Trump.
It's against that backdrop that some party officials predict that even a Supreme Court fight won't move public opinion.
"I don't think the Supreme Court decision is really going to swing a whole lot of people in one direction or another," said Jim Wertz, the Democratic chairman in Erie County, Pennsylvania. "People seem to be entrenched much more in ideological and cultural ways where they're not necessarily prone to being moved by one thing or another."
Polling in the aftermath of the vacancy found Republicans and Democrats nearly equal in their response to the looming Supreme Court fight, with perhaps a slight edge to the left. A survey from Morning Consult released this week, for instance, found 54%% Republicans said the court was "very important" in picking between Biden and Trump, compared with 60% of Democrats.
Of course, that doesn't mean both sides won't try to make it matter, seizing on the heightened attention as early voting commences and the first presidential debate takes place next week.
Ruffini said Trump's eventual Supreme Court nominee could have a greater effect in Senate races, shoring up the conservative votes for vulnerable incumbents like Thom Tillis in North Carolina and Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. But he recalled that the extremely rancorous fall 2018 hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh still proved to ultimately have a negligible effect on the midterms.
"Dems were expected to win by 7 to 8 points. They won by 7 to 8 points," Ruffini said. "There was a bit of narrowing during the hearings because it revved up the GOP base more, but those were very short-lived effects on the polls."
There are also different political calculations being made depending on which candidate Trump chooses to nominate.
Brad Todd, a GOP consultant working on Senate races, said he believed a nomination of Barrett, a Notre Dame Law School professor, could shore up Catholic Republican women in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin who are inherently conservative but uncomfortable with the president's style.
"Suburban Republican women are the most difficult part of the coalition for this president. She's a suburban Republican woman, with an impressive career doing the tough life balance all suburban Republicans can relate to. She's going to spark the most irrational, irresponsible reaction from Democrats you can imagine. She offers a prospect of a significant benefit for the president for November," Todd said. "Professional Republican women and Catholics will see themselves in her. Democrats attack her at their own peril."
Andrew Hitt, the chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, said the Supreme Court selection would help reframe the issue matrix for "values voters" and serve as a motivator for those who might have been contemplating sitting out the election.
He said Biden would be hurt by his position of refusing to release a list of his own prospective justices, allowing Republicans to fill the vacuum with a portrait of a far-left selection.
"It's going to hurt him if he continues to kind of hide the ball from folks," Hitt said.
Republicans have traditionally benefited from a focus on the judiciary, a dynamic Democrats are hoping to flip. Democratic strategists predict that regardless of whom Trump nominates, the party will use the pick to refocus attention on pending court cases over the Affordable Care Act, the protection of which Democrats made a centerpiece during their successful 2018 midterm effort.
"If health care is the issue at the front of voters minds when they vote, Democrats are going to win," said Tyler Law, a Democratic strategist.
