Poll: 47 percent give Sotomayor high marks

WASHINGTON (CNN) - A poll conducted immediately after President Barack Obama announced his nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court suggests that nearly half of Americans have a favorable opinion of the president's choice.

Forty-seven percent of those questioned in the Gallup survey, which was released Thursday, say they rate Sotomayor as an excellent or good choice for the high court, with one in three respondents saying she is a fair or poor nominee. One in five people questioned had no opinion.

"People may have an image of Judge Sotomayor - Latina, modest origins, impressive achievements. But they don't know much about her views or her personality. Those will have to be filled in," CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider said.

The 47 percent in the Gallup poll who rate Sotomayor an excellent pick is slighly higher than the 43 percent who suggested they felt the same way about Samuel Alito immediately after he was nominated by President George W. Bush to the high court in November 2005. But it's slightly lower than the 51 percent who indicated they thought John Roberts was an excellent or good pick right after he was nominated by Bush in July 2005.

The Gallup poll was conducted on May 26, with 1,015 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.