Impeachment Backfires as Trump Now Leads All Dem Challengers in General Election Poll
With the House of Representatives set to vote Wednesday on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, it appears that the impeachment effort is actually a losing issue for Democrats.
That argument has been bolstered by a new poll from USA Today/Suffolk University that found that not only was the issue of impeachment losing support among the American people, but it also may have resulted in Trump taking the lead over all of the top Democratic presidential contenders in hypothetical matchups.
Readers may recall that the liberal media seemed to take great glee in reporting polls over the summer and early fall that showed many, if not all, of the 2020 Democratic contenders would defeat Trump in the upcoming election.
But that was before Democrats went all-in on impeachment over the contrived controversy that is the Ukraine issue, in which Trump is alleged to have committed impeachable offenses like abusing his executive power and obstructing a Congressional investigation.
According to the USA Today poll of 1,000 registered voters, which was conducted Tuesday through Saturday last week, Trump now enjoys a 3-point lead over former Vice President Joe Biden — who remains the front-runner among Democrats — of 44-41 percent.
Considering the poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, that could be considered a statistical tie. But Trump’s leads against the other 2020 Democrats were wider.
In matchups against the next two top-tier contenders, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the president led those candidates by 5 and 8 points, respectively, 44-39 percent and 45-37 percent.
Rounding out the top five of the Democrat contenders were South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Trump would hypothetically defeat Buttigieg by 10 points, 43-33 percent, while he would beat Bloomberg by 9 points, 43-34 percent.
USA Today noted that the numbers for Trump had both good and bad implications. His base of support appeared rock solid, but that could also be taken to mean that he had a ceiling of support that would be difficult to rise above.
It was further noted that an unnamed third-party candidate was also included in the survey and that hypothetical spoiler in the head-to-head matchups consistently drew between 11-15 percent support. That level of support seems to be higher than most third-party candidates actually receive in a typical election, meaning it could include a substantial portion of undecided voters that could break either way by Election Day.
Separately, USA Today/Suffolk University reported that the same poll showed a decrease in support for impeachment, with more Americans now opposing impeachment and removal than supporting it.
In this current poll, 51 percent said they were against impeachment and removal while 45 percent were for it and 4 percent remained undecided.
In October, that same question netted 47 percent against impeachment and 46 percent in favor of it, meaning the numbers have ever so slightly shifted in Trump’s direction.
This shouldn’t be all that surprising, given how obvious it has become that the impeachment effort is a wholly partisan and political exercise by those who’ve long been searching for any excuse to be used to oust a president they detest from office.
No real crime, much less an impeachable offense, has been clearly articulated by the Democrats, and the whole thing looks increasingly like a desperate effort to smear and weaken the president ahead of his re-election campaign, most likely due to the fact that Democrats know they lack a contender formidable enough to beat an incumbent president backed by a strong economy and solid base.
The fact that so many of the Democrats are also putting forward outrageously expensive and openly socialist or progressive policies that most people disapprove of — or are gaffe-prone and arguably corrupt, in the case of Biden — certainly doesn’t help matters, either.
To be sure, Trump is far from safe in his effort to retain the White House, but if the Democrats continue to go down the divisive impeachment road and fail to offer up any viable candidates that could bring the nation together, his re-election is looking all the more likely.
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