This data was additionally published in Yahoo News’ “New Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that Democrats have so far failed to seal the deal on impeachment” as part of a Yahoo News/YouGov poll on impeachment
America’s polarized feelings about impeachment have stabilized in recent weeks, even as the House Judiciary Committee presents more evidence on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. A plurality of registered voters (47%) now favor Trump’s impeachment and believe he should be removed from his office. That number has remained stable in the Yahoo News/YouGov tracker.
Democrats have not increased their margin of support for impeachment, but Americans have grown more certain of the outcome of these hearings. In a late-November poll, a majority of Democrats (53%) and a plurality of Independents (39%) believed that at the end of the impeachment inquiry, Trump would "be impeached by the US House of Representatives but not convicted by the Senate.” In the same November poll, a majority of Republicans (56%) believed “Trump will not be impeached.”
Just two weeks later, fewer than half (47%) of Republicans believe the president will finish his first term without being impeached. Rather, a belief that Trump will be impeached by the US House of Representatives but not convicted by the Senate has grown from 32 percent to 42 percent among Republicans. This week, even more Democrats (61%) and Independents (45%) believe this will be the outcome of the impeachment inquiry.
Support for Trump’s impeachment and removal remains at a steady plurality, but the divide on what Trump did (and did not do) is widening. Nearly half (48%) of Independents believe Trump abused his office, which is up from 43 percent in November. Republicans are five percentage points less likely (10%) to believe he abused his powers than they were in November (15%).
The data from Yahoo News/YouGov indicates that Democrats are slowly succeeding in convincing registered voters of their message that President Trump was “primarily acting in his own personal and political self-interest” by pressuring Ukraine to launch investigations (52% agree). At the same time, Republicans have failed to overwhelmingly sell the idea that President Trump was “primarily concerned about rooting out corruption regardless of whether it would benefit him politically” (39% agree; 45% disagree).
Registered voters appear split on whether President Trump's behavior toward Ukraine was “no different than how previous presidents have conducted foreign policy” (40% agree; 43% disagree). Trump voters are particularly likely to say that previous presidents have conducted similar foreign policy (79% agree), but a plurality of Americans (39%) disagree.
Related: Education gaps and partisan splits evident on whether President Donald Trump should be impeached
See the full toplines and crosstabs 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 1,017 registered voters, and the MOE for percentages of registered voters is 3.4%.
Image: Getty
