Poll: Senate Trial Isn't Changing Anyone's Minds on Impeachment
As the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump enters what appears to be its final days, a new poll shows that after proceedings in the House and Senate, a larger share of voters opposes Trump’s removal than in late October.
The day before the House voted on Oct. 31 to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry against Trump, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed that 46 percent of those polled opposed impeachment and 49 percent opposed it, according to CNBC.
After hearings by the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees and the early phases of the Senate trial, those numbers are now reversed, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
In the poll, published Sunday, 49 percent said Trump should not be removed from office, while 46 percent said he should go.
A December poll found that 48 percent of those polled felt Trump should remain, with the same number wanting him removed.
“We’ve been through an impeachment inquiry in the House, a trial in the Senate, and America’s attitudes about Donald Trump have hardly budged,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.
“Same as it always was,” added Democratic pollster Peter Hart.
Unsurprisingly, the poll found a wide variance by party enrollment.
Among Democrats, 84 percent support removing Trump, while 91 percent of Republicans oppose removing him from office.
The telephone poll of 1,000 registered voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
The Senate trial was set to resume at 11 a.m. Eastern time Monday with closing arguments followed by time set aside for senators to debate the issue and discuss their positions. The vote on removing Trump from office is scheduled for 4 p.m. Wednesday.
Acquittal on the articles of impeachment filed by the House is widely expected after Democrats lost votes Friday to call additional witnesses, a move opposed by Republicans.
On Sunday, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the vote will end the battle but not the war.
“It will only end when the American people re-elect Donald Trump in November and fire Nancy Pelosi and Tlaib for being in charge of the House,” Graham said on the Fox News show “Sunday Morning Futures,” referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who had called for impeaching Trump the moment she took her oath of office in January 2019.
“If you want to exonerate the president, American people, and you want to deter future impeachments like this, make sure President Trump gets re-elected. And let’s fire Nancy Pelosi,” Graham said.
He said impeachment came as a result of extremists taking over the Democratic Party.
“And what happened to the Nancy Pelosi that was thoughtful, prayerful, said impeachment could only be done bipartisan? Tlaib and these people took over the Democratic Party. And Chuck Schumer is having AOC breathing down his neck in terms of a Democratic primary,” Graham said of the Senate minority leader and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of New York. “Chuck Schumer is scared to death to lose his job to AOC. And that’s why this debacle continued in the Senate.”
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