Congressman George Santos entered his job as a U.S. Representative in January amid accusations that he had lied about portions of his resume to voters. When Santos took office, the Economist/YouGov poll showed that Republicans were divided on whether he should resign (45% of Republicans said yes, 30% said no) or Congress should vote to remove him from office (41% of Republicans said yes, 34% said no).
Now, several months later — following Santos being charged with wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and making false statements to the House of Representatives — most Republicans (59%) want Santos to resign and around half (51%) say he should be removed from Congress if he does not resign. Among Americans overall, 63% say he should resign and 60% say if he does not then he should be removed from office.
By nearly five to one (48% vs. 10%), Republicans say Santos is guilty of the charges brought against him by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Overall, 56% of Americans call Santos guilty, while 8% say he is not.
As recently as March, nearly a third of Republicans (30%) still held a strongly or somewhat favorable view of the GOP Congressman. Now, after his indictment, that number is just 23%. A majority of Republicans (54%) now view Santos unfavorably.
— Carl Bialik and Taylor Orth contributed to this article
See the toplines and crosstabs from the Economist/YouGov poll conducted on May 13 - 16, 2023 among 1,500 U.S. adult citizens.
Methodology: Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel using sample matching. A random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education, geographic region, and voter registration) was selected from the 2019 American Community Survey. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification, and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given prior to November 1, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (33% Democratic, 31% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 3%.
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