Poll: Majority of Americans support Trump impeachment and conviction
January 25, 2021
A majority of Americans support the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump and want to see him convicted in the Senate and barred from holding future federal office, according to a new poll released Monday by Monmouth University.
The poll found 56 percent of Americans approve of the the House of Representatives impeaching Trump for his role in inciting the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, a slight uptick compared with his first impeachment — 53 percent of those surveyed by Monmouth University in January 2020 approved.
A breakdown by party identification shows the poll's results still fall largely along partisan lines. While 92 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents support the impeachment, only 13 percent of Republicans are in favor — a modest increase from 8 percent the first time Trump was impeached last January, according to the poll.
"There is somewhat more agreement that Trump did something wrong than there was with the first impeachment," said Patrick Murray, the director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a statement. "But there are still a good number of Republican stalwarts who continue to stand with the former president regardless."
Results from the poll also showed just over half of respondents support of a conviction of Trump in the Senate, with 52 percent in favor. Many Republicans have cried foul over the impeachment proceedings, questioning the validity of putting a former president on trial. However, the Democratic impeachment managers have defended their actions, in part because a conviction could bar Trump from holding federal office in the future. Among those surveyed, 57 percent said they supported the Senate taking that action against Trump.
The historic second impeachment of Trump charges the former president with a single count of inciting an insurrection when addressing supporters at a rally on the day that Congress was set to certify the presidential election results. Trump spent months after last November's election trumpeting baseless claims of election fraud in an attempt to undermine public faith in the election results.
The poll found that 54 percent of those polled were "very confident" that the 2020 election was fair, an increase from 44 percent in mid-November, while a quarter of respondents said they "remain not at all confident" in the results. Although 65 percent said they believed President Joe Biden won the election "fair and square," 72 percent of Republicans still label Biden's victory as fraudulent. A third say they will never accept Biden as president.
“A number of ostensible leaders in the Republican Party continue to peddle this false narrative and many more who know this claim is wrong have not been particularly outspoken in disavowing it. Their fellow partisans in the American public are simply following that lead,” Murray said in his statement.
According to the poll, Trump ended his term with a 56 percent disapproval rating, matching the lowest rating in his presidency.
The poll was conducted by telephone from Jan. 21-24 with 809 adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Source: https://www.politico.com/
