Senate Should Convict Donald Trump, Half Of Americans Say In New Poll

According to a poll from Quinnipiac University released Thursday, half of Americans think that the U.S. Senate should convict President Donald Trump.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives impeached Trump last month for inciting an insurrection against the U.S. government by allegedly ordering his supporters to storm the Capitol building and stop the certification of Electoral College votes in the 2020 presidential election.

The poll showed that the American public is sharply divided along partisan lines, with a strong majority of Democrats and a small plurality of independent voters saying that the upper chamber should convict the former president. The vast majority of Republican respondents said the opposite.

For months, Trump refused to acknowledge the results of the 2020 election, claiming that it was rife with voter fraud and rigged for Democrat Joe Biden. Courts across the nation — including the Supreme Court — rejected his claims as baseless and Congress certified Biden’s victory.

The survey found that, overall, most believe there was no widespread voter fraud. Virtually all Democratic voters and a majority of independents said that Biden won legitimately, but 76 percent of Republicans said that they believe there were widespread irregularities.

“The impeachment question is framed by two distinctly different versions of history and offers as vivid an example of the chasm between Republicans and Democrats as you can find,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.

The poll also established that nearly eight in 10 Americans are very or somewhat concerned about extremist violence in the aftermath of the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. Seventy one percent said that American democracy is under threat, with voters across the political spectrum sharing this sentiment.

Similarly, respondents across party lines, races and genders said that social media companies need to be held accountable for the spread of disinformation online.

As Malloy put it, “Global, massively influential and too often flat out wrong, the flow of social web information is in need of policing, say Americans.”

Last week, as CNN reported, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky introduced a motion that declared it unconstitutional to impeach a former president. Only five Republicans voted against the motion, signaling that they will not vote to convict Trump when the time comes.

“This is a big victory for us. Democrats can beat this partisan horse as long as they want — this vote indicates it’s over, the trial is all over,” Paul said.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, lawyers David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr. will lead Trump’s legal team.