The three-month House inquiry has failed to build majority support among Americans for or against impeaching President Donald Trump, leaving the nation evenly divided, 48% to 48%, on whether to remove the President from office, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.
The poll, released Wednesday before the House voted for impeachment along nearly uniform party lines, shows that Americans also view the proceedings from separate, partisan corners. Some 90% of Republicans oppose impeaching Trump and removing him from office, while 83% of Democrats favor it, the Wall Street Journal writes.
Among independents, 50% support impeachment and removal, while 44% oppose it. The poll is more evidence of the unusual nature of politics in the Trump era: While the daily political news is turbulent, views of the President remain stable.
Opinions of impeachment haven’t budged since October, before the House impeachment inquiry heard testimony about the Trump administration’s actions regarding Ukraine. At that time, 49% favored impeaching and removing Trump, with 46% opposing, statistically even with the new poll, the Journal adds.
Similarly, Trump’s job approval rating remains essentially unchanged in recent months. It stands at 44% in the new poll, with 54% disapproving of how he is handling his office. Since early 2018, Trump’s job approval rating has hovered within a narrow band, between 43% and 47%.
The results suggest that neither party accomplished one of its main goals during the impeachment debate. Democrats failed to persuade most Americans that Trump’s actions were serious enough to merit his removal from office, while Republicans have so far failed to build the backlash to impeachment that they had hoped for, the Journal noted.
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