More than half of US voters want President Donald Trump impeached and removed from office, according to a Fox News Poll out on Wednesday.
The poll marks the fourth in two days that showed public opinion is shifting on the impeachment inquiry. A formal impeachment inquiry, launched by the House last month, centers on Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, after a whistleblower filed a complaint about the call. A transcript of the conversation released by the White House shows Trump repeatedly pushed Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden in Ukraine.
The Fox News poll found 51% of registered voters want Trump impeached and removed from office and another 4% want the President impeached but not removed from office. Forty percent of respondents were opposed to impeachment altogether.
The poll also showed an increase in support for impeachment across a number of demographics compared with July. Support for impeachment was up 11 points among Democrats, 5 points among Republicans and 3 points among independents.
Impeachment support was up 5 points among evangelical Christians and 8 points among white men without college degrees — two constituencies key to Trump’s 2016 election.
The figures come the same day the President claimed in a tweet that “only 25 percent want the President Impeached, which is pretty low considering the volume of Fake News coverage, but pretty high considering the fact that I did NOTHING wrong.”
Trump did not say to what poll he is referring, but most reputable surveys — including Fox News’ on Wednesday — are well above that mark. A Washington Post poll Tuesday found that 25% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents support an impeachment inquiry. That poll also says that a majority of Americans say they endorse the decision by House Democrats to begin an impeachment inquiry of Trump.
In an effort to stave off the fast-moving inquiry, the White House earlier this week sent a letter to congressional Democrats to say the President and his administration won’t cooperate, arguing the proceedings amount to an illegitimate effort to overturn the 2016 election results.
The Fox News Poll was conducted by both landlines and cellphones from October 6 to 8 with 1,003 randomly chosen registered voters in the United States. The poll has a margin of sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points for all registered voters.