Poll Shows 70 Percent Of Americans Think Donald Trump Asking A Foreign Leader To Investigate A Rival Was Wrong

A new Topline/ABC News/Ipsos poll shows that 70 percent of Americans think that Donald Trump asking a foreign leader to investigate a political rival was wrong, ABC News reports. However, not all of those 70 percent believe that the POTUS should face the same consequences for those actions.

Pollsters gauged the opinions of a sample of Americans over the weekend (Saturday, November 16 and Sunday, November 17), after the first week of publicly-televised impeachment hearings, to see how voters are following the process and how they feel about it. And the numbers don’t look good for Trump.

By a slim majority, 51 percent of Americans believe that Trump‘s actions were wrong and that he should be impeached and removed from office. Six percent believe that his actions were wrong and that he should be impeached, but not removed from office. Thirteen percent say his actions were wrong, but that he should neither be impeached nor removed from office.

Further, 25 percent of poll respondents said his actions were not wrong, and 4 percent declined to answer this question.

The poll also looked into questions about what effect the televised impeachment hearings are having on Americans’ beliefs about the possible eventual outcome. When asked at what point they decided upon whatever belief they came to regarding whether Trump’s actions were wrong and whether or not he should be impeached and/or removed from office, 21 percent say they came to that conclusion after watching last week’s impeachment hearings.

Twenty-seven percent say they had made their decision some time after the news of the Ukraine phone call was first reported in September, but before last week’s televised hearings. Nineteen percent said they reached their decision soon after the news of the phone call first broke, while 32 percent had made their decisions before news of the Ukraine phone call was first reported.

And as for how closely Americans are following the impeachment process, 21 percent say they’re following the hearings “very closely,” while 37 percent answered “somewhat closely,” which means that a solid majority — 58 percent — are paying somewhat close attention to the hearings. Forty-two percent are not following the hearings, with 18 percent saying they’re not following closely at all.

As has frequently been the case with these types of public opinion polls, there’s a steep partisan divide in the responses as well. Among Democrats, 85 percent say they believe that Trump should be impeached in the House, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office. Among Republicans, 65 percent say they believe Trump has done nothing wrong.