Public opinion is shifting in favour of US Democrats on impeachment, with new polls showing about half the nation supports a House inquiry into President Donald Trump after revelations he pressured the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former vice president Joe Biden.
The latest NPR-PBS News Hour-Marist survey found 49% approval for impeachment, against 46% who said they disapprove. That’s a 10-point jump in favour of impeachment over the same survey from April, around the time former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia's election interference was released.
A Politico-Morning Consult survey found a similar bounce in a short period of time, with support for impeachment spiking 7 points in the week since the Ukrainian revelations came to light, although only 36% in that poll said they support impeachment, compared to 49% who said they oppose it.
The latest Hill-HarrisX survey found support for impeachment rising 12 points to 47%, against 42% who oppose it.
And a Harvard CAPS-Harris survey released Thursday shortly before the release of the whistleblower complaint confirmed the upward trend toward impeachment.
That survey found the public split at 50-50 on whether Trump should be impeached for “pressuring” the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden’s dealings in the country, including 52% of independents.
The same poll conducted in July, around the time of Mueller’s testimony to Congress, found only 40% of voters overall and 24% of independents backing impeachment.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also said yesterday public opinion is now on the side of an impeachment inquiry against Trump.
Pelosi this week announced her support for an investigation after the surfacing of a whistleblower complaint that said Trump appeared to solicit a political favour from Ukraine's president aimed at helping him be re-elected next year.
Pelosi for months took a cautious approach in weighing the calls of other Democratic House members to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump, which grew louder after former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified on July 24 about his probe of Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“In the public, the tide has completely changed; it could change now - who knows - but right now after seeing the complaint and the IG (Inspector General) report and the cavalier attitude the administration had towards it, the American people are coming to a different decision," Pelosi said at a journalism event hosted by the Texas Tribune news website.
She added that her resistance to holding an impeachment inquiry quickly evolved from urging that fellow Democrats remain cautious of the political fallout ahead of next year’s elections to full steam ahead as details emerged of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine’s leader.
In a July 25 telephone call between Trump and Zelenskiy, the US leader asked his counterpart to launch an investigation of Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
Both Bidens have denied any wrongdoing.
