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Historic percentage in US want President removed from office
A historic percentage of Americans want Trump removed from office
(CNN)The potential removal of President Donald Trump from office starts out more popular than any other removal process of a president in recent American history. Removing Trump from office remains quite unpopular among Republicans, however.
A look across polls conducted since riots at the Capitol
on Wednesday shows that a clear plurality of Americans overall want
Trump out of office, even as President-elect Joe Biden is set to be
inaugurated on January 20.
You can see that well in an ABC News/Ipsos poll
released on Sunday. The majority (56%) say Trump should be removed from
office, while just 43% believe he should not be removed.
An
average across polls since Wednesday (in which no pollster is counted
more than once) shows that 50% of Americans want Trump to either be
impeached, for the 25th Amendment to be invoked or for Trump to resign from office. The minority (43%) say that none of these should occur.
The high percentage of Americans who want Trump out of office comes as House Democrats are already planning to introduce an impeachment resolution against Trump as soon as Monday.
When
Democrats began an impeachment inquiry against Trump in September 2019,
removing him from office wasn't anywhere near as popular. Before House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that inquiry, only about 40% of Americans were for impeaching and removing Trump. About half the electorate was against it.
The fact that so many Americans want Trump out of office is, indeed, historically unprecedented this early in the process.
The percentage of Americans who wanted Bill Clinton impeached after his affair with Monica Lewinsky never climbed higher than 40%.
Likewise,
the percentage of Americans who thought Richard Nixon should be removed
or should resign from office was at about 40% when the House voted to
formally start an impeachment inquiry in February 1974.
Eventually,
the plurality of Americans wanted Nixon and Trump out of office, but it
took impeachment proceedings for support to outrun opposition.
At
this point, it's not clear whether more Americans want Trump out of
office than after the impeachment and removal proceedings against him
began and took place in late 2019 and early 2020. The percentages
between now and then (about half the electorate) are close.
Trump, of course, was impeached by the House, but he was not removed by the Senate.
Read More
- How a pro-Trump mob besieged the Capitol
- Trump pressured Pence to engineer a coup, then put the VP in danger, source says
- As riot raged, Trump tried to call senators to overturn election
- 'No one knew what we were supposed to be doing there': Inside the law enforcement chaos
- LIST: Members calling for impeachment or the 25th Amendment to be invoked
Like
last time around, there does not seem to be much of an appetite among
Republicans for Trump to be booted from office. In order for Trump to be
found guilty by the Senate this time around, at least 34% of Senate
Republicans would have to vote yes.
Support among Republicans stood at just 13% in the ABC News/Ipsos poll.
And an average of all polls since Wednesday puts that percentage at
about 15%. About 10% to 15% of Republicans were in favor of impeaching
and/or removing Trump during the last Trump impeachment proceedings.
What
happens to these percentages in the coming weeks is very much up in the
air. Biden's going to be president in less than two weeks. He will be
president and Trump will likely be gone from office by the time the
Senate votes on any impeachment issues regarding Trump.
It's
possible that Trump leaving office will leave Americans wanting to
forget about the issue of impeachment all together. (Scholars are split
on whether you can impeach and remove a president who is no longer in
office.) It's also conceivable that Trump being out of office will make
the stakes less high on impeachment proceedings and more Americans more
likely to want to punish him.
What
is clear cut is that Americans are very unhappy with Trump after the
events and aftermath of Wednesday. The mere idea of removing a president
from office is a big step. A lot of Americans look ready to take it
again.
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