2020 Democrats concerned impeachment inquiry could overshadow presidential campaign
Some Democratic candidates are not convinced that a campaign focused mostly on impeaching President Trump would help them beat him; Peter Doocy reports.
A new poll indicates American voters are evenly split -- 47 percent to 47 percent -- on whether President Trump should be impeached and removed from office over the Ukraine controversy.
But the findings in a Quinnipiac University national survey released Monday erase a 20-point gap against impeaching the president in the previous Quinnipiac poll seen just a week ago. In the earlier survey, voters opposed impeachment, 57 percent to 37 percen.
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"Following a week when House Democrats announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump and more information emerged about the president's actions regarding Ukraine, public opinion about impeachment is showing a shift," Quinnipiac University polling analyst Mary Snow said. "The percentage of voters who think the president should be impeached and removed from office climbed."
The survey indicates Democrats showing the greatest change from a week earlier, with their support for impeaching Trump surging from 73 percent to 90 percent. Opposition to impeachment among independents dropped from 58 percent a week ago to 50 percent in the new poll, with support from independents jumping from 34 percent to 42 percent. Republicans remain overwhelming opposed to impeachment over the scandal, which has rocked the Trump White House.
A majority of voters – 50 percent to 40 percent - say the president did something wrong during a conversation in July with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump urged the Ukrainian leader to probe former Vice President Joe Biden, potentially his made rival in the 2020 election.
Independents, by a 52 percent-41 percent margin, feel the president did something wrong.
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"Despite the fact that the impeachment inquiry is just getting underway, half of American voters already believe that President Trump has done something wrong when it comes to his interactions with Ukraine's leader. Of that group, there's a virtually unanimous view he did something seriously wrong," Snow said.
Fifty-two percent of voters questioned say that asking a foreign leader for help in defeating an opponent in an upcoming election is a good enough reason to impeach a president and remove him from office, while 38 percent say it is not.
But the poll also indicates a majority believe members of Congress backing impeachment at this point are doing so based on partisan politics rather than on the facts.
The Quinnipiac University poll was conducted Friday-Sunday (Sept. 27-29), with 1,115 self-identified registered voters nationwide questioned by live telephone operators. The survey's margin of error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
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