This data was additionally published in Yahoo News’ “Most voters think Trump committed abuses but are split on impeachment” as part of a Yahoo News/YouGov poll on impeachment
After weeks of impeachment hearings in the US House Intelligence Committee, a plurality of Americans believe that President Donald Trump should be impeached (46%) and removed (46%) from office — though, that shifts based on political partisanship and Americans' level of education.
A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that Democrats overwhelmingly believe that Trump asked a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent (83%), withheld military aid from Ukraine until they agreed to the investigations (82%) and that he abused his powers as president (86%). Fewer than one-third of Republicans believe the same — revealing a stark partisan gap between what Americans believe the president did (or did not do) in pursuit of investigations from Ukraine.
The poll followed hours-long testimonies from career diplomats, who recounted how members of the Trump Administration went against long-standing US foreign policy in order to push the announcement of investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden. At least half of registered voters say after the hearings that Trump asked a foreign leader to investigate a political opponent (58%), withheld military aid to Ukraine (51%), and abused his power (51%).
Registered voters are twice as likely to be uncertain that Trump asked a foreign leader for investigations (16% say “not sure”) or withheld military aid to Ukraine (15% say “not sure”) than say that he abused his powers as president (8% say “not sure”).
Even after the House Intelligence Committee conducted five days of witness hearings, Americans remain split on whether Trump should be impeached and removed from the nation’s highest office. A plurality of US Adults (46%) favor the impeachment of Trump and 38 percent are opposed, based on a question that explained to panelists that “if impeached, President Trump would have a trial in the US Senate where Senators would listen to evidence and decide whether or not to remove Trump from office.”
A majority of Democrats support impeaching Trump (81%) and a majority of Republicans (81%) oppose it. Registered voters are split between whether Trump should be impeached: 48 percent say they favor impeachment and 45 percent oppose impeachment. Fewer than one in ten (8%) are not sure of their opinion.
When it comes to whether Trump should be removed from office or not, there are significant education gaps. Fewer than half (46%) of US adults say Trump should be removed from office, but a majority of those with a post-grad degree (57%) say or college degree (53%) say that he should. Fewer than half of those with some college education (41%) or with a high school degree (44%) say Trump should be removed from office.
Education gaps are also stark when it comes to whether Trump abused his office or not. Six in ten (63%) US Adults with a post-grad degree believe that Trump did abuse his presidential powers. A majority of college graduates (57%) say the same. Fewer than half of those with some college education (46%) or with a high school degree (45%) are certain that Trump abused his powers. Those individuals without a college degree are more likely to say they are uncertain about what Trump did.
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See the full toplines from the Yahoo News/YouGov survey
Methodology: The survey was conducted by YouGov for Yahoo News. A representative sample of 1,500 adults from YouGov’s research panel were interviewed online. The sample was weighted by age, race, gender, education, voter registration and 2016 presidential vote. The margin of error (MOE) for the full sample was 2.8 percent. The sample included 1,002 registered voters, and the MOE for percentages of registered voters is 3.4%.
