Donald Trump’s Removal From Office Now Supported By Over Half Of Americans, New Poll Reveals

More than half of Americans support convicting President Donald Trump in his Senate trial and subsequently removing him from office, The Independent reports. The percentage of Americans supporting his removal has grown sharply over the course of just a few days.

According to the latest MSN poll, conducted on Christmas Day, 55 percent of poll respondents said they supported convicting Trump in the Senate and removing him from office. That number is significant because it’s the highest level of support for Trump’s removal from office so far. In recent days, the number shot up at least seven points, after sinking from a high of 54 percent down to a low of 48 percent prior to this poll.

Conversely, just 40 percent of Americans actively oppose convicting Trump in the Senate and removing him from office. Again, that number is significant because of the way it’s moved, in this case, down from 47 percent a week ago. Similarly, the divide between the percentage of Americans who support Trump’s removal and those who oppose it has widened, from just a percentage point (48 percent to 47 percent) a week ago to 15 percentage points (55 percent to 40 percent).

Researcher David Rothschild, an economist at Microsoft Research, says that the widening gap, and the speed at which the gap has widened, shows a dramatic shift in Americans’ perceptions of the impeachment process.

“When you follow polling daily, you learn people rarely make big jumps from Opposition to Support,” he said.

Further, he noted that, as far as he sees it, this widening gap is evidence that Americans aren’t prepared to stand for Trump and the Republicans’ “obstruction” (as he calls it) of the impeachment process.

“This polling is a clear sign that [the] Republican policy of complete obstruction is not selling well to [the] voting public,” he says.

Poll numbers aside, the probability of Trump being removed from office following his Senate trial is somewhere near zero, by most analyses. That’s because the Constitution requires that two-thirds of the Senate — 67 senators — must vote to convict in order to remove a president from office. Since the Senate is controlled by Republicans, albeit by a narrow margin, that outcome is considered all but impossible.

However, as previously reported by The Inquisitr, there may be a roundabout way for Democrats to increase the odds of Trump being removed following his Senate trial. Theoretically, the Senate could enact a rule that requires the vote on whether or not to convict Trump to be held in secret. By some analyses, as many as 30 or even 35 Republican senators would vote to convict Trump and remove him from office if they were allowed to do so in secret.