That's thanks to a November 2013 rules change at the hands of Democrats eliminating the need for a 60-vote majority to confirm significant nominees.
That absurdly high number more or less guarantees a significant overlap with Oscar nominees, and this is what has happened.
Gardner held up about 20 Justice nominees, a significant number considering Senate Republicans and the White House have for months accused Democrats of slowing down consideration of other Trump picks.
Decades after the height of the civil rights movement, questions involving race and ethnicity persist as a recurrent theme before the Supreme Court, and attitudes on those issues remain a significant prism through which nominees are evaluated by those on the left and the right.
But the unprompted way he did it Monday is especially notable, given that Republicans are coming off a week of criticism for moving forward with a Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual assault — a nominee Trump spent a significant chunk of time Monday defending.
At the same time, it would allow larger states to participate early enough in the process that their voters could play a significant role in choosing the nominees.
Large white populations are not the only ways in which these two early-voting states, which play such a significant role in choosing presidential nominees, fail to reflect the United States in the 21st century.
The list of nominees included a significant number of first timers that critics believed worthy of greater recognition.
History shows that with rare exceptions – Sarah Palin in 2008 – the choice of a vice-presidential nominee rarely has a significant influence on the outcome of an election, and when it does, it is more likely to be a negative than a positive.
The NBC/WSJ poll also shows Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with a significant advantage among women, all non-white voters, millennials and white voters with a college degree.
The company said in a press release that all 10 director nominees were elected by "a significant margin," at least according to preliminary results.
