The poll, jointly conducted by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, asked a random sample of adults their opinions on Trump and the possibility he could be removed from office. When it came to the impeachment inquiry, the survey discovered that Democrats have support from the public.
In September, Democrats in the House of Representatives launched an impeachment inquiry and accused Trump of violating the Constitution when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
Ukraine later announced that they would review an investigation into the owner of a company, which had Hunter as a board member, but claimed it had nothing to do with pressure from the White House. The original investigation, Trump claimed, was squelched by Hunter’s father, who, along with other international figures, pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor general Viktor Shokin while he was in office.
Conducted between October 1 and Sunday, The Washington Post poll found that 58 percent of those surveyed either strongly or somewhat agreed that Congress was right to begin an impeachment inquiry. Thirty-eight percent responded that they shouldn’t have taken the step toward impeachment.
The survey results were almost a complete flip from The Washington Post’s previous poll, which was conducted during the first week of July. Those results showed almost the same percentage of people, 59 percent, disagreed with Congress beginning impeachment proceedings.
Similarly to other news about the state of Trump’s presidency, the poll caught fire on social media and several Twitter users pointed out the jump in support for the impeachment inquiry from July.
The Democratic Coalition, the largest grassroots anti-Trump organization, claimed the poll represented “momentum” in the movement to impeach the president.
Actor Piper Perabo posted on Twitter about the survey and added a link to a website that allows people to select their elected representatives and learn where they stand on impeachment.
While some people used the poll as proof that members of Congress should pursue impeachment with vigor, others discredited it for not being representative of the whole country. One person called it a “fake poll” because 58 percent of 1,007, the number of people polled, was only 584 people. Others related it to polls that showed former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton winning the presidency and didn’t actually voice the opinion of people in the real world.
Although the majority of people agreed with the decision to launch an impeachment inquiry, the poll showed Democrats fell just short of having majority support in how they handled the situation. Forty-nine percent of the 1,000 adults polled approved of Democrats’ handling of the impeachment inquiry, compared to 44 percent who disapproved.
Impeachment, the process of launching a trial in the Senate against the president, is outlined in the Constitution. As was the case with former Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, a president can be impeached but remain in office. After the house passes articles of impeachment against a president, the Senate must vote by a two-thirds majority to remove the president from office.
