President Donald Trump on May 10th, 2017. (Getty)
A new poll has found that a plurality of Americans want to impeach President Donald Trump.
This comes from a Public Policy Polling survey released on May 16th. Public Policy Polling is a Democratic polling firm, but FiveThirtyEight, which grades each polling firm based on their history of accuracy, gives them a rating of B+.
In the poll, 48 percent of respondents said that President Trump should be impeached. This is the first time that Public Policy Polling has found more people in support of impeachment than against it, as only 41 percent of respondents are opposed to impeaching Trump.
Support for impeachment has risen in recent months. In late January, 35 percent of respondents to a Public Policy Polling survey said that Trump should be impeached. This rose to 40 percent in early February and 46 percent in mid February. Support for impeachment dropped down to 44 percent in March, but now, in May, the number has risen to 48 percent, the highest since Public Policy Polling started asking this question.
Whether or not they’re opposed to it, quite a lot of Americans believe President Trump will be impeached or at least resign. Forty-five percent of respondents to the May 16th Public Policy Polling survey said that they don’t think President Trump will finish his first term, whereas 43 percent think he will and 12 percent aren’t sure.
A number of prominent Democratic politicians have already said that Donald Trump should be impeached or have at least brought up the idea of impeachment as a possibility. For example, California Representative Maxine Waters recently said, “The President needs to be impeached.” She also lead a crowd in a chant of “Impeach 45!” in February.
Other Democrats who have floated the idea of Trump being impeached include Jared Huffman, Richard Blumenthal, Tulsi Gabbard, and Keith Ellison, according to CNN.
Trump’s overall approval rating in this May 16th poll is 40 percent, with his disapproval rating being 54 percent. In addition, 55 percent of voters said that they don’t believe President Trump is honest, and 51 percent said that they consider him to be a liar.
One thing that hurt Trump in this poll was the president’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. Only 37 percent of respondents support Trump’s decision to fire Comey, while 48 percent are opposed. And 54 percent of respondents said they think Trump fired Comey because of the FBI’s Russia investigation.
The American Health Care Act is also extraordinarily unpopular with voters. Just 25 percent of voters support it, while 52 percent oppose it. Some of that opposition comes from Republicans, 49 percent of whom do not approve of the American Health Care Act.
Obviously, any polls about the 2020 race are not going to be all that accurate this far out, but just for fun, Public Policy Polling matched Trump up with some potential 2020 candidates. They found that 54 percent would vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump; Biden has remained coy about the possibility of a 2020 run, but Politico reported last month that privately, Biden and his staff are looking ahead at a possible 2020 campaign plan.
In addition, in this poll, 52 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump. Finally, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who has hinted he might run for president, is polling ahead of Donald Trump, though just barely. Forty-two percent of voters said they’d vote for The Rock in 2020, while 37 percent said they’d vote for The Donald instead.