Voters divided over whether Trump should be removed: NBC poll

Voters are divided, largely along partisan lines, over whether President Donald Trump should be removed from office, a new NBC News poll shows.

Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats say Trump, who was impeached by the House of Representatives on Wednesday, should be convicted by the Senate. Fewer than 1 in 10 Republicans say the same.

In all, about 50% of Americans say that Trump should be removed while 48% are opposed, a divide within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Independents narrowly oppose removing Trump from office, with 45% in support and 53% against it.

The poll was conducted between Jan. 10 and Jan. 13, as more information about the Jan. 6 riot in Washington continued to surface. It asked whether respondents believed Trump should be impeached and removed based on “what you have seen, read, or heard about Donald Trump and the events at the U.S. Capitol last week.”

It’s unlikely Trump could be convicted in time to face removal, though he could be hit with other sanctions.

President-elect Joe Biden will be inaugurated on Jan. 20 and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has suggested that there will be no trial before the change of administration.

While that schedule means it will be too late for an impeachment to remove Trump from office, it is possible that the Senate could disqualify him from running again.

Trump is the first president to be impeached two times and would be the first to face a Senate trial after leaving office.

Democrats in the House of Representatives impeached Trump in late 2019 after he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his family. He was ultimately acquitted by the GOP-controlled Senate last year.

The current impeachment, for instigating the Washington insurrection, drew more bipartisan support among lawmakers in the House. Ten Republicans joined Democrats — the final vote was 232-197 — while none did during the first impeachment.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump during his impeachment last year. No Republicans have said they will convict Trump this time around, though McConnell is reported to support the impeachment and multiple GOP senators have urged the president to resign.

It takes 67 votes in the Senate to convict, meaning that 17 Republicans would have to join every Democrat in the 100-person congressional body. Democrats will have 50 members after Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are sworn in by the end of the month.

Voters are about equally divided over the current impeachment as they were over the first one. A December 2019 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 48% of voters supported Trump’s impeachment and removal, while 48% opposed it.

The numbers track with the general stickiness of Trump’s popularity, which has remained essentially constant throughout his four years in office….