by George Rasley, CHQ Editor
When more voters oppose a candidate or issue than support it, we say the candidate or issue is “underwater” and when even CNN finds more Americans oppose impeachment than support it Democrats are not just underwater, they are drowning.
The new CNN poll shows support for impeachment and removal at 45% and opposition at 47%. This is the fourth poll to come out recently showing more opposition to impeachment than support. The Real Clear Politics average now has 46.5% support and 47.4% oppose.
But what is even more important is the trend, which CNN unpacked in this remarkable paragraph:
Support for impeaching Trump and removing him from office stands at 45% in the new poll, down from 50% in a poll conducted in mid-November just after the conclusion of the House Intelligence Committee’s public hearings. Opposition to impeachment and removal stands at 47% in the new poll, up from 43% in November. Support for impeachment and removal among Democrats has dipped from 90% in November to 77% now.
So, the trend is that even Democrats are abandoning their congressional leadership on impeachment, with 23% now opposed or indifferent.
But there’s another angle to this that our friend Liz Sheld touched on in her daily column for American Greatness (which we highly recommend you follow):
We don’t elect the president by popular vote, so why would we consider polls that frame the impeachment debate as a popular issue? We shouldn’t. The question is how many states have popular votes that support impeachment because that is how the 2020 election will be decided. If a majority of voters in a majority of states do not support impeachment, the Democrats election strategy of impeaching the president so they re-take the White House in 2020 has been a failure.
What percentage of the 45% who support impeachment live in California or New York? They are only two states but they have a large enough population to skew results when we only consider the popular numbers. This is how the Democrats/media weaponize polls results to make people think there is more impeachment support than there probably is. Now I don’t have access to the xtabs, that would give a bit of insight into my questions depending on the sample size of the survey but my spidey sense is that a majority of states do not have popular votes that support Trump’s impeachment. A headline that reads “41 out of 50 states oppose impeachment” has a different effect than one that says “45 percent of voters/adults/likely voters support impeaching the president.” I just made that 41 figure up, but you get my point.
To be fair, we have seen some polling from critical swing states on the impeachment question. But to really get a sense of the bias against the president, most of the polling is focused on the misleading popular vote. Stay vigilant.
We don’t have access to polls from all 50 states, but a quick look at some public polls from key states tells us Liz Sheld has it right and the Democrats are in even worse shape than the CNN poll suggests.
From Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a USA Today paper:
After multiple hearings, dramatic public testimony and wall-to-wall news coverage, Wisconsinites aren’t budging on impeachment.
For the second straight month, a majority of registered voters don’t believe President Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office, according to Thursday’s Marquette University Law School Poll.
Forty percent said the president should be impeached and removed while 52% said he should not. The numbers were nearly identical to November’s poll.
Writer Bill Glauber further reported that “the high-water mark for impeachment in the poll came in October, before House Intelligence hearings on Trump’s policy in Ukraine. Back then, 44% favored impeachment and removal to 51% who did not.”
In other words, the Democrat Adam Schiff’s Kangaroo Court hurt the case for impeachment among the fair-minded voters in Wisconsin.
And according to Jacob Knutson of Axios, the Wisconsin poll is no outlier.
According to Mr. Knutson’s analysis of Washington Post polling data, in a dozen October and November polls on impeachment in battleground states like Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin, an average of 44% of those surveyed supported impeaching President Trump while 51% opposed impeachment.
The establishment media will no doubt continue to use national popular vote polls to make support for impeaching President Trump look stronger than it really is, but even that trick isn’t working given the outrages that occurred right before the eyes of voters during the Schiff and Nadler hearings.
There are 31 Democrat members of Congress who represent districts that President Trump carried in 2016. That includes 13 districts where the President defeated Hillary Clinton by more than 6 points. Two Democrats, Rep. Collin Peterson (MN-7) and Rep. Jeff Van Drew (NJ-2) have indicated they will vote against impeaching President Trump. You can access this list through this link.
We urge CHQ readers and friends to call those Democrats to tell them that, when Election Day 2020 rolls around, their District’s conservative voters will remember if they voted to help Adam Schiff frame President Trump and will hold them accountable at the ballot box.
The toll-free Capitol Switchboard number (1-866-220-0044), call these 31 Democrats now to stop the unfair and unfounded impeachment of President Trump.
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Photo “Donald Trump” by Photo “Donald Trump” by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. CC BY 2.0.
