Poll: About Half The Public Approves Of Vote To Impeach Trump

Americans lean toward the House of Representatives’ decision to impeach President Donald Trump, a new HuffPost/YouGov survey finds. Forty-nine percent of Americans approve of the decision to impeach Trump, according to the poll, with 42% disapproving and 9% unsure.

Views are overwhelmingly partisan: Eighty-nine percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents approve of the impeachment vote, with 80% strongly approving. Across the aisle, 85% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents disapprove, with 80% strongly disapproving.

Relatively few other polls have been released since the impeachment vote, making it too soon for any definitive summaries of the current state of public opinion on impeachment.

But this poll suggests that the vote itself did little to jar existing opinions about Trump’s fate. Americans say, 47% to 42%, that Trump should be removed from office ― a margin well within the range of support for impeachment and removal in past HuffPost/YouGov surveys. (By a similar margin, 45% to 41%, Americans say they want their senators to vote to remove Trump.)

Trump’s impeachment has garnered near-universal public attention: 96% of Americans say they’ve heard at least a little about the House vote, and 63% have heard a lot. Six in 10 say they’re aware of whether or not their own representative voted for impeachment, with the rest unsure. 

Most also understand what would happen if Trump were removed from office: Seventy-seven percent correctly said that Vice President Mike Pence would become president. Few, however, expect that to happen. Just 18% of Americans say they believe it’s even somewhat likely that Trump will be removed from office, with only 7% calling it very likely. Nearly three-quarters say it’s not very or not at all likely that the Senate will oust the president.

The public is close to split on congressional Democrats’ handling of the impeachment inquiry, with 43% approving and 46% disapproving. Americans offer somewhat more negative assessments of congressional Republicans (39% approve, 47% disapprove) and of Trump himself (39% approve, 51% disapprove). 

Americans are divided on the motivations of the representatives who voted to impeach Trump: Forty-three percent say they believe these representatives genuinely thought Trump deserved impeachment, and 44% say the votes are just a matter of playing politics. Americans say, 49% to 35%, that representatives who voted against impeaching Trump are playing politics, rather than acting out of the belief that Trump deserves to stay in office.

Use the widget below to further explore the results of the HuffPost/YouGov survey, using the menu at the top to select survey questions and the buttons at the bottom to filter the data by subgroups: 

The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Dec. 20-22 among U.S. adults, including 364 Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.

HuffPost has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.

Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some but not all potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.