A new poll shows 44 percent of Minnesotans think the U.S. House should vote to impeach President Donald Trump while 37 percent are opposed to the idea.
Nineteen percent of Minnesota voters are undecided, according to a KSTP/SurveyUSA poll conducted from November 15-16. Steven Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College, said the fact that so many Minnesotans are undecided on the matter shows “this is a very confusing situation.”
He said in an interview with KSTP that the latest poll yielded “among the worst” favorability numbers he’s ever seen in Minnesota for an incumbent president. Fifty-three percent of Minnesotans said they view the president either unfavorably or extremely unfavorably, compared to 31 percent who have a favorable or extremely favorable view of the president.
“The question in this survey is, ‘What do you think of him as a person?’ That’s not the same question as, ‘What do you think of the job he’s doing?’ That could be a very different result,” said Schier, elaborating on his comments in a recent column for MinnPost.
“Some Minnesotans probably dislike him personally but approve of the job he is doing and may well vote for him next November. Enough people with those views did that in 2016 to put him in the White House,” he wrote.
According to the poll, 45 percent of Minnesotans think there is enough evidence for the U.S. Senate to convict President Trump while 40 percent don’t think there’s enough evidence.
A Star Tribune poll from October had Minnesotans more evenly split on the issue of impeachment with 48 percent opposing impeachment and 47 percent supporting it. That poll asked Minnesotans about President Trump’s job performance and found that 40 percent approve of the job he is doing.
In his column, Schier drew attention to the “vast” partisan divide on the topics of a House impeachment and a Senate conviction.
“GOP support for either action rests in the single digits while Democratic support rises above 70 percent for both impeaching and convicting. Independents reside in the middle, with support for either actions in the 40s,” he said.
A majority of the respondents for the KSTP/SurveyUSA poll were from the metro area (61 percent) while 39 percent were from Greater Minnesota. Schier also noted that the poll’s 5.1 percent margin of error is “pretty large by survey standards.”
President Trump is making a serious play for Minnesota in 2020 and his reelection campaign told The Minnesota Sun that it’s taking the state “very seriously.” The reelection effort plans to spend up to $30 million in Minnesota, compared to the $40,000 it spent in the state in 2016.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar said during Wednesday night’s Democratic debate that she thinks President Trump’s conduct warrants impeachment.
“This is a president that not only with regard to his conduct with Ukraine but every step of the way puts his own private interests, his own partisan interests, his own political interests in front of our country’s interests and this is wrong,” she said. “This is a pattern with this man and it goes to everything from how he has betrayed our farmers and our workers to what he has done with foreign affairs.”
– – –
Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News, The Ohio Star, and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Impeachment Supporters” by Elvert Barnes. CC BY-SA 2.0.
