Support for impeaching President Donald Trump surged among political independents and rose by three percentage points overall since last week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.
More Americans also said they disapproved of the president’s handling of foreign threats.
The Oct. 18-22 poll showed public opinion continued to shift as Americans digested a flurry of news over the past several weeks stemming from the congressional impeachment inquiry and Trump’s decision to pull troops from northern Syria.
Overall, 46% of Americans said they supported impeachment and 40% said they opposed it.
Support for impeachment was relatively steady among Republicans and Democrats over the past week but it surged among independents, a group that includes people who neither identify as Democrats nor Republicans and do not favor either party when they vote.
Among independents, 45% said in the latest poll they supported impeachment and 32% said they opposed it, the strongest level of support recorded in more than a year.
A little more than 1 in 3 independents had said they were in favor of impeachment in more than a dozen previous Reuters/Ipsos polls since June 2018.
Trump leveraged his advantage in support among independents to narrowly win the White House in 2016 and it is expected that he will need them again to be re-elected.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted after several administration officials backed up portions of a government whistleblower’s report that alleged Trump pressured Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate one of his main political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden. The report said Trump linked the probe to the release of foreign aid.
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