More Americans oppose Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation to the Supreme Court than any other successful nominee in the last two decades, according to two new polls conducted immediately after her confirmation hearings last week.

Nonetheless, support for Sotomayor's confirmation has remained steady throughout the nomination process, hovering at least a few percentage points above the 50 percent mark the entire time, trend data from the USA Today/Gallup and ABC/Washington Post polls show. At the same time though, the percentage of these surveys' respondents who oppose confirmation rose from last week, while support remained largely the same. USA Today/Gallup pollsters found that 36 percent now oppose Sotomayor's confirmation, compared to 33 percent last week. In the ABC/Post survey, 30 percent now oppose, up 5 percentage points from last week.

So, what accounts for the opposition? According to both polls, respondents who once indicated they were undecided are now lining up to oppose Sotomayor. "With only 9 percent of Americans expressing no opinion about Sotomayor's fate, the lowest seen for any nominee, she now garners more opposition than any Supreme Court nominee of the past two decades, except for the unsuccessful Harriet Miers," Gallup senior editor Lydia Saad explains in the USA Today/Gallup analysis. Trend data from both polls shows comparative numbers for past nominees, specifically looking at polling before and after each nominee's hearings. According to the numbers by USA Today and Gallup, Sotomayor's 36 percent opposition is well above all other nominees since Clarence Thomas' nomination, excluding Miers (who withdrew before the hearings would have taken place). In the ABC/Post survey, dissatisfaction with Sotomayor tops all recent nominees. Still, that doesn't compete with the 57 percent of respondents who the poll said opposed Robert Bork's nomination in 1987.

Legal experts on both ends of the ideological spectrum have emphasized how much more politicized the Supreme Court confirmation process has become over the last several nominations. This could explain the amount of opposition against Sotomayor's nomination, despite how comparatively calm and predictable her hearings were and the growing consensus on both sides of the aisle that she will be confirmed. Saad speculates: "While, perhaps, not a deterrent to her winning confirmation, it [the increased opposition] signals that the Republican criticisms of her that were aired starting before the hearings began have had some effect."