Donald Trump In Trouble With American Public, More Than Half Want Him Removed, 1st Post-Impeachment Poll Shows
The first new poll conducted after the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump shows that while the vote did little to affect public opinion, Trump remains in deep trouble. More than half of all Americans want Trump not only impeached, but they also want the Senate to convict him and remove him from office, according to the results compiled by the Morning Consult survey released late Friday afternoon.
The Morning Consult poll showed that 51 percent of Americans continue to favor Trump’s removal from office. It’s an unlikely prospect, as removal would take 67 votes in the Senate, under the Constitutional requirement of a two-thirds vote to convict in a Senate trial. That means all 45 Democrats and two independents would need to vote in favor of removing Trump, and 20 Republicans must join them. But so far, none of the Senate’s 53 Republican members have indicated any likelihood that they would break from supporting Trump.
That percentage is basically unchanged from the previous Morning Consult impeachment poll, released on December 16, two days prior to the impeachment vote.
Both polls are largely in line with other recent surveys asking Americans if Trump should be removed from office via the impeachment process. A Washington Post poll earlier in the week found 49 percent supported Trump’s removal.
With the statistical margins of error built into each poll, the results of the two surveys are essentially the same.
The polling also lines up, for the most part, with the average of all impeachment polls compiled by the political data site FiveThirtyEight. On average, 47.5 percent remain in favor of getting Trump out of the White House with the tool of impeachment.
But the polling average also reveals a sharp partisan divide on the impeachment issue. While 82.2 percent of self-identified Democrats say that they favor Trump’s impeachment, and 44.3 percent of independents agree, a mere 11.1 percent of Republicans say that they support impeachment, according to the polling average.
According to Friday’s Morning Consult poll, most Americans also take the side of Democrats in wanting a trial in the Senate that includes witness testimony and evidence. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already announced that he plans to conduct a short trial that would feature no witness testimony at all.
But according to Friday’s poll, 54 percent of Americans are against McConnell’s plan, desiring instead to see witness testimony and new documentary evidence as well. Even 43 percent of Republicans said in the poll that they wanted to see a trial with new witnesses, including those who refused to testify during the House impeachment hearings.
