Nearly half of voters want Trump impeached and convicted. Trump says everyone's 'reading the wrong polls.'
At this moment in time, as House Democrats prepare to make their impeachment case public and President Trump is "ravenously consuming news about the subject — primarily through a friendly lens," as Politico reports, there seems to be an unusual consensus in the polls. Two polls released Sunday and one on Friday all found that 49 percent of voters want Trump both impeached and removed from office.
In a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Sunday, the 49 percent support for impeaching and convicting Trump and 46 percent opposition is a reversal from a month ago, when 43 percent backed impeachment/removal and 49 percent said no. In Sunday's Fox News poll, 49 percent support, 41 percent opposition, for impeaching and removing Trump is a downward shift of 4 points from early October, when 51 percent backed the proposition and 40 percent opposed it. A Washington Post/ABC News numbers released Friday — 49 percent in favor of impeachment and removal and 47 percent opposed — are unchanged from early October.
There are wide partisan splits in the polling and an apparent hardening of positions — in the Fox News poll, 57 percent of impeachment opponents, or about a quarter of the entire sample, said no new evidence could make them support impeachment. In the same poll, 52 percent said the impeachment inquiry is a legitimate, important investigation while 39 percent called it "bogus." Trump agreed with the 39 percent. "You're reading the wrong polls," he told CNN's Jeremy Diamond on Sunday. The "real polls" show "people don't want anything to do with impeachment."
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All three polls were conducted Oct. 27-30. The Fox News poll surveyed 1,040 registered voters nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of ±3 percentage points. WSJ/NBC News polled 900 adults, including 720 registered voters, Oct. 27-30, with a margin of error of ±3.3 points for the entire sample, ±3.7 points for registered voters. The Washington Post/ABC News poll surveyed 1,003 adults and has a margin of sampling error of ±3.5 points.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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