New Poll Shows Majority of Americans Don't Want Impeachment for Trump

After Michael Cohen’s plea deal and the resurfacing of his allegations that Donald Trump ordered the attorney to pay off women with whom Trump had affairs, a new poll shows that although a majority of Americans surveyed believe Cohen, a majority do not favor impeachment.

Axios and Survey Monkey conducted the online poll, which surveyed 4,362 adults and demonstrates some interesting findings. A total of 64 percent of those surveyed believe that Cohen is telling the truth, but only 44 percent support impeachment proceedings against the president.

It’s worth noting that President Richard Nixon didn’t face this high of a percentage of Americans in favor of impeachment until the weeks before he resigned.

Breaking the findings down into subgroups reveals interesting partisan fault lines. An overwhelming majority of Democrats — 93 percent — put stock in Cohen’s accusations, and nearly eight in ten are in favor of impeachment. It’s a different story for Republicans, among whom only 8 percent support impeachment, while 38 percent believe Cohen. The percentages of independents nearly match the average.

Axios points out some results from other subgroups that are worth looking at:

• Three key subgroups — white suburban women, “Never Hillary” independents, and rural voters — are strongly against impeachment.

• Two subgroups — millennials and African American women — strongly favor it.

• However, every subgroup believes Cohen about the illegal payments. The numbers suggest that many Americans just aren’t bothered about it enough to demand impeachment proceedings.

• Americans are more divided about whether Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russian government to swing the 2016 presidential election to him. Millennials and African American women believe it, rural voters and “Never Hillary independents” don’t, and white suburban women are split.

It’s worth noting that both sides of the aisle are watching the numbers on these two issues. Many in the GOP believe that the Cohen allegations could trigger impeachment if the “blue wave” crests before the November election and the Democrats regain control of Congress. At the same time, the Democrats want to see how impeachment fares in the public eye in order to determine whether it’s worth a try.

David Nather at Axios mentions the tightrope the Democrats are having to walk when considering impeachment. “Top Democrats have already been cautious in how they talk about it, if they talk about it at all,” he said. “Here’s what Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the top Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee and the man who would lead an impeachment effort, told The New Yorker in February: ‘[Y]ou should not impeach the President unless you really believe that, by the end of the process, you will have not only Democrats agreeing with you but a good fraction of the people who voted for him.’”

Not surprisingly, pursuing impeachment isn’t a slam dunk for the Democrats, but President Trump doesn’t have too much reason to breathe easy right now.

The survey also points out some other fascinating facts. Those surveyed gave the president a 44 percent approval rating — including 27 percent who “strongly approve” — over a 53 percent disapproval rating. Naturally, those numbers vary widely across party lines, where 87 percent of Republicans approve while 7 percent of Democrats approve, as well as by age group and ethnicity.

The issues that most recipients rated as of primary importance were jobs and the economy and healthcare, while terrorism and foreign policy rated least important. When asked about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election cycle, those surveyed were divided almost evenly among those who believe that collusion took place and those who didn’t.

The bottom line in this poll is that Americans are as divided as ever when it comes to Donald Trump, and it looks as though that phenomenon isn’t changing anytime soon.