Opposition to Impeachment Inquiry at Highest Level Since Pollster Began Tracking
Newly released polling shows that support for the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry fell while opposition to it went up to its highest level to date following the first week of public hearings.
A Politico-Morning Consult survey conducted Nov. 15-17 found 48 percent of respondents support the inquiry and 45 percent oppose it.
That is a net drop in support of 5 percentage points since the last poll was taken prior to the Rep. Adam Schiff-led public hearings.
NEW FROM ME: The first public hearings have failed to increase support for #impeachment, per new @MorningConsult poll.
48% support the impeachment inquiry into the president, while 45% oppose it — the narrowest margin we’ve recorded on the question. https://t.co/8PErmmL9qY pic.twitter.com/meXmvBlu67
— Eli Yokley (@eyokley) November 19, 2019
Support dropped from 50 percent the week prior to the hearings, while opposition rose from 42 percent.
The current 45 percent of respondents who oppose the inquiry is the highest recorded to date by Morning Consult since it began weekly polling about the issue in early October.
The witnesses who testified during the first week of public hearings included acting U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine William Taylor, State Department official George Kent and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
None offered firsthand knowledge of why President Donald Trump delayed releasing U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
Yovanovitch, an Obama administration holdover, was removed from her position in May, months before Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Democrats claim the commander in chief engaged in wrongdoing.
The call transcript itself showed that Trump did not demand Zelensky’s government look into Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s questionable dealings in Ukraine, but merely requested it.
There was no linkage made to the receipt of Ukraine aid.
Trump released the aid in mid-September despite the fact that no investigation was opened into the Bidens or the 2016 race.
An old lawyers’ adage is if you don’t have the law on your side, argue the facts of the case at trial, or vice versa. Finally, if you have neither, stand on your desk and scream at the jury.
The Democrats don’t have the law or the facts on their side, so they’re left to scream (or at least keep alleging) Trump did something wrong: quid pro quo, bribery, abuse of power, cover-up …
Americans are seeing there is no there there to the Democrats’ case.
Gallup found that Trump’s approval rating has ticked up 2 percentage points since October after allegations of wrongdoing surfaced.
Trump is back at his pre-impeachment approval level of 43 percent measured in September.
In the battleground state of Wisconsin, the president tops all Democratic contenders in a newly released Marquette Law School poll.
Trump polls strongly against Biden and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina too, according to a New York Times and Siena College survey published early this month.
If the Democrats’ intent in launching their impeachment inquiry was to hurt Trump’s re-election chances, it appears to be failing.
The irony of ironies would be if the president wins by a landslide in November 2020, and the impeachment inquiry was the pivotal moment that secured the victory.
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