How Resistbotters are Reacting to Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, in three charts

On June 27, 2018, Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement. Two weeks later, on July 9, President Trump announced his nomination to replace Justice Kennedy. Since then, Resistbotters have sent over 150,000 letters to Congress related to Brett Kavanaugh.

What We Don’t Know About Brett Kavanaugh

We analyzed every letter Resistbotters sent to their elected officials between July 9 and September 5, 2018 (anonymized to protect user privacy) and found that 34% (over 150,000 letters) referenced either Brett Kavanaugh or the Supreme Court nomination process. This number varies quite a bit by state — for reasons we’ll discuss later in this post.

As we enter the third day of confirmation hearings, letters related to Kavanaugh have made up the vast majority of those sent to Congress. In the first two days, 86% (just over 31,000 letters) were related to Kavanaugh.

Senators who received the highest share of letters related to Kavanaugh tend to be moderate Republicans and “vulnerable” Red-State Democrats.

This adds a bit more color to the state-level numbers shared above, however it is worth noting that Resistbot actively engaged constituents of many of these senators by encouraging them to write — specifically on their thoughts about Brett Kavanaugh and the nomination process in general. These letters were then hand-delivered by our amazing DC-area volunteers.

Here’s what you can do

Your voice matters! Write to your Senators by sending the word RESIST to Resistbot on Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or as a Twitter direct message. If none of those work for you, Resistbot also supports old fashioned SMS: text RESIST to 50409 to get started.