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Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence look on as U.S. President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol Building on February 5, 2019 in Washington, DC.
- Morning Consult has released an eye-popping new survey that found 43% of voters think congress should begin impeachment proceedings.
- They've been asking this question for months, and support for impeachment has wavered between just 35% and 38% over that period.
- The 9-point jump in just several days is due to a confluence of factors stemming from a conversation the President had with his Ukrainian counterpart in July.
- The percentage of Republicans who supported impeachment doubled since the last time the question on impeachment was asked, according to Morning Consult.
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As major details and documents have rolled out over the past several days in an escalating scandal linked to Ukraine, support for impeaching Donald Trump has increased significantly among US voters - including Republicans - according to a new Morning Consult poll.
The poll, which began the same day House Democrats launched a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump, asked voters whether "Congress should begin impeachment proceedings to remove President Donald Trump from office."
Morning Consult found that 43% of voters said congress should begin impeachment proceedings to remove President Trump from office, which is full 9 percentage points higher than when the question was asked Sept. 20-22.
The pollster's analysis is significant thanks both to the size of the sample as well as their track record on the question, which they have been asking since Spring of 2018. This was a substantial move from their norm across the board.
- Among Democrats, 79% back impeachment proceedings, up 13 points from 66% last weekend
- Among Independents, 39% back impeachment proceedings, up 6 points since last weekend.
- Most interestingly, the number of independents who didn't have an opinion either way also rose.
- That means that the percentage of independents who opposed impeachment proceedings overall fell 9 points from 45% to 36% over the course of several days.
- Among Republicans, the percentage who favored impeachment doubled from 5% to 10%.
The poll was of 1,640 registered voters and has a 2 point margin of error.
It's early, but the polls are all saying similar things
This poll is particularly interesting because Morning Consult has been dutifully asking this question going on two years. Following the release of the Mueller Report in early May, the numbers regarding impeachment have been flat according to their survey. Support has been between 35% and 38% over the preceding 12 polls Morning Consult conducted from May through September. A 9-percentage point jump - though it's only from a single poll - is consequential knowing that context.
Other polls released today regarding impeachment have less of a track record on the question but support the key finding that the events of the past several days have substantially moved the needle. A YouGov poll found 55% of adults supporting impeachment, including an eye-popping percentage of Republicans.
Meanwhile, a PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll released Thursday found 49% of US adults said they supported the House of Representatives launching an impeachment inquiry into the president. That represents a significant jump since a similar question was asked in a PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll in May, after the release of former special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian election interference, which found just 39% of Americans felt Congress should move to hold impeachment hearings.
Earlier today Insider released a poll conducted on SurveyMonkey Audience that found 53% backed a formal inquiry and further 45% of respondents backed impeachment.
The details keep on coming
The rise in support for impeachment among all voters occurred in concert with a series of major developments in Washington linked to a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Amid mounting pressure over the call, which a series of reports in the media had tied to a whistleblower report from a US intelligence official, the White House on Wednesday released a memo on the conversation.
The memo on the phone call showed Trump repeatedly pressuring Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, confirming media reports from roughly the past week.
On Thursday, the whistleblower complaint was publicly released, presenting damning charges against Trump in relation to the call.
"In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple US Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election," the complaint said.
The complaint said White House officials were "deeply disturbed" by the call and worried they'd witnessed Trump "abuse his office for personal gain."
On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the launch of a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump. The release of the phone call memo and whistleblower complaint have only exacerbated support for some level of an impeachment action among lawmakers - a majority of House members now support at least holding an impeachment inquiry. Based on the new poll from Morning Consult, it appears that a significant portion of the public is being swept up in this momentum.