What polls say about impeachment
Voters think the Trump-Ukraine scandal is worse than POTUS’s actions before
What to expect when you’re expecting impeachment (hearings):
The takeaway: I’m on vacation this week, but here’s a brief take on some early impeachment numbers. Voters don’t approve of the president’s actions with Ukraine. A near-majority of registered voters support starting impeachment hearings. Support for impeachment itself is also probably up, though it’s unclear if the bounce will last. If you’re the president, you can’t really spin your way out of these numbers.
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It has been a whirlwind week. The Speaker of the House of Representatives announced an impeachment inquiry over the president’s actions asking a foreign government to investigate his political rivals. As of Thursday night, here’s where we are in the polls:
A poll from The Economist and YouGov this week found that 55% of voters think it would be “inappropriate for the President to request a foreign government open an investigation of one of his potential political opponents”.
It also found that 65% of voters thought it would be inappropriate “for the President to threaten withholding foreign aid to a country if that country refuses to take an action which personally benefits the President”. That includes 38% (!) of Trump voters.
These numbers are markedly different than support for impeachment during the Mueller investigation. In May, a poll from The Economist and YouGov pegged approval of impeachment proceedings at just 36%.
A separate poll from YouGov on Monday found that 55 percent of voters would support impeachment if “President Donald Trump suspended military aid to Ukraine in order to incentivize the country’s officials to investigate his political rivals”.
Data from Morning Consult shows a 7 percentage point jump in support for impeaching the president.
A poll from NPR, PBS Newshour and Marist found support for impeachment hearings at 49 percent of registered voters. 48% disapproved.
Support for impeachment is holding steady at 45% in tracking data from Civiqs.
I will leave the conclusions up to you for now, though I will say one thing: I think it’s still too early to figure out how public opinion on impeachment has changed. We simply need more (preferably good) data.
Nevertheless it is important to keep in mind how support for removing Nixon from office evolved over the course of the Watergate hearings. The Pew Research Center has done some good work on this front:
The graph shows that support for removing president Nixon from office was under 50% until the day of his resignation. At this point in the investigation (when hearings just kicked off) support for removal was at or lower than 20%.
Finally, here’s a question to ponder: What is the public’s role in impeachment hearings? If we don’t know all the information, can we really be good judges of whether the president should stay or go? If support for impeachment hearings is below 50%, is that reason to call them off?