A slim majority of Americans, quarter of young Republicans, want the Senate to remove Trump, Pew finds

A narrow 51 percent majority of U.S. adults say the Senate should remove President Trump from office at the end of his impeachment trial, a Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday found, while 46 percent said the Senate should keep him in office. Those numbers are nearly identical to a CNN poll released Monday. An Associated Press-NORC poll Thursday found a 45 percent plurality of Americans who want the Senate to convict and oust Trump, versus 40 percent who favor acquittal and 14 percent who said they didn't know enough to have an opinion.

There are stark partisan and demographic splits. In Pew's survey, 82 percent of black Americans, 66 percent of Hispanics, 53 percent of college-educated white Americans, 63 percent of Americans under 30, 85 percent of Democrats, and 26 percent of Republicans age 18 to 29 said the Senate should remove Trump from office. The groups that want Trump to remain in office include Americans 65 and older (56 percent), white Americans (58 percent), white Americans without college degrees (64 percent), and Republicans (86 percent).

Pew also found that 63 percent of Americans said Trump has definitely (38 percent) or probably (25 percent) done something illegal since launching his presidential campaign, including 91 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of Republicans.

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The AP-NORC poll asked specifically about Trump's interactions with Ukraine that led to his impeachment; 42 percent said Trump did something illegal, up from 38 percent in October, while another 32 percent said he merely did something unethical and 25 percent said he did nothing wrong. The percentage of Republicans who said Trump did something illegal held steady at 8 percent, but the slice that said he did nothing wrong shrunk to 54 percent, from 64 percent before the House's impeachment hearings.

Trump's job approval rating is 40 percent in the Pew survey and 41 percent in the AP-NORC poll, roughly where it has been for months. Pew's American Trends Panel (ATP) surveyed 12,638 people Jan. 6-19, and the full sample has a margin of sampling error of ±1.3 percentage points. AP-NORC polled 1,353 adults Jan. 16-21, and the margin of sampling error for all respondents is ±3.6 percentage points.