Where do Americans stand on convicting Trump of impeachment? Most support in new poll
Most people in a new poll said that they support the impeachment of former President Donald Trump by the U.S. House of Representatives and want him to be convicted by the Senate.
The poll released Monday from Monmouth University found that 56% of people supported Trump being impeached for his role in the deadly riot at the Capitol earlier in January while 42% said they didn’t support his impeachment.
Fifty-two percent of people surveyed in the poll said they want the Senate to convict Trump while 44% opposed conviction. The survey was conducted from Jan. 21-24 with 809 U.S. adults. The poll has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
The U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump on Jan. 13 on the charge of “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the Capitol siege. Before the attack, Trump spoke outside the White House at what he billed a “Save America Rally,” where he continued his false claims that the election was stolen from him and encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol.
Trump was the first president to be impeached twice. No president has ever been convicted in the Senate and doing so would require a two-thirds majority vote. If all Democratic senators vote to convict, 17 Senate Republicans are still needed to convict Trump, after which they could also bar him from running for president or seeking federal office again.
The House is expected to deliver an article of impeachment against Trump on Monday evening, triggering the start of the trial proceedings. Lawmakers have agreed to a delay in the trial, which is expected to begin on Feb. 9, giving Trump’s defense team and House impeachment managers time to prepare.
“There is somewhat more agreement that Trump did something wrong than there was with the first impeachment. But there are still a good number of Republican stalwarts who continue to stand with the former president regardless,” Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute , said in the poll.
Trump was first impeached in 2019 on accusations of leveraging U.S. aid to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate President Joe Biden. Trump was acquitted in 2020. Similar proportions of Americans approved of his first impeachment when polled in Jan. 2020: 53% said they approved while 46% disapproved, according to Monmouth.
The latest survey found 53% of respondents said Trump’s actions were “definitely grounds for impeachment” while 30% said his actions were “improper, but not to level of impeachment.” Fifteen percent of people said Trump didn’t do anything wrong.
Fifty-seven percent of people in the poll said they favored the Senate barring Trump from seeking the presidency or any federal office again while 41% said they opposed barring him from office.
Sixty-three percent of respondents also said now that Biden has been sworn in as president, it’s “time to move on,” while 32% said they will “never accept Biden as president.”
This story was originally published January 25, 2021 at 1:59 PM with the headline "Where do Americans stand on convicting Trump of impeachment? Most support in new poll."