A new poll by Public Opinion Strategies on behalf of the National Republican Congressional Committee and Team McCarthy suggests the Democratic Party’s drive to impeach Trump isn’t resonating well with voters in closely contested congressional districts in the upcoming 2020 election. A strong majority reported they didn’t find Trump’s alleged offenses impeachment-worthy.
This poll, conducted from October 1-3, found that in the districts of 40 GOP-held House seats targeted by the Democrats and 55 Democrat-held seats targeted by Republicans, 59% of voters don’t see Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as impeachable, and only 37% do. While responses mostly fell along party lines, 57% of independents came down against impeachment, which would see Trump put on trial in the US Senate for alleged “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
In another part of that poll, participants in districts where Democrats hold seats but which Trump won in 2016 were asked who they might vote for in 2020 of two possible options. The question read as follows:
“And, thinking ahead to the next election, would you be more willing to vote for: A Democratic candidate for Congress who believes that President Trump should be impeached and removed from office … or … A Republican candidate for Congress who believes that President Trump’s actions do not rise to an impeachable offense and that voters should be allowed to decide for themselves in next year’s elections?”
About 54% of respondents said they would be more willing to vote for the Republican, with 38% saying they would vote for the Democrat.
However, another poll from the same time period conducted by the Washington Post-Schar School found a majority of Americans support the impeachment inquiry. Their poll, conducted from October 1-6 without specific geographic focus, found 58% of those surveyed supported the inquiry, while 38% disagreed with the Democrats’ probe. About 4% had no opinion either way.
It would be remiss to ignore the fact that the poll sponsored by the Republicans returned a result favoring the Republican narrative and the poll sponsored by a strongly liberal and anti-Trump paper produced data vindicating their position.