Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, accompanied by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif. and other congress members speaks during a news conference on Trump Putin Helsinki Summit at Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday, July 17, 2018. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
If the Democrats are hoping impeachment will go their way, more and more evidence has come out showing that it may be a bit more damaging to them than they initially thought.
According to The Hill, swing states aren’t too keen on removing Trump from office through impeachment despite saying that an investigation is supported:
Support for impeachment is under water in new surveys of Wisconsin and Florida, two key states in next year’s fight for the White House.
Trump won both in 2016, turning Wisconsin red for the first time in decades and returning Florida to the GOP column after former President Obama carried it twice.
In New Hampshire and Arizona, two more swing states, most voters oppose impeachment. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton narrowly won the Granite State in 2016, and Democrats believe they have a chance to win Arizona after securing a Senate race last year.
A New York Times–Siena College battlegrounds poll released Wednesday found that majorities in Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Florida oppose removing the president from office through impeachment. Majorities or pluralities do support an investigation of Trump, however.
In other words, uncovering the story is perfectly fine, but voters would rather not jump on board the impeachment train unless it’s warranted. If Democrats were counting on a populace that would zealously jump on the impeachment bandwagon from the get-go, they definitely aren’t getting one.
“We’ve known for a long time that everybody in California and New York want Trump to be impeached, they’ve wanted that since the day he came into office,” an anonymous Trump campaign official told The Hill. “But in these states where the election is really going to be fought, we’re seeing that voters oppose impeachment, and there’s an intensity to that opposition.”
Republicans have been suspicious that impeachment polling in the past has been heavily weighted due to participates being from states that tend to be smurf blue in terms of party loyalty. This polling from swing states paints an entirely different picture. Specifically, if we look at Wisconsin, which polling shows impeachment is a losing battle, especially among independents:
A Marquette University Law School survey of Wisconsin released last week found 46 percent supporting the impeachment inquiry, but 49 percent opposed. Just 44 percent say Trump should be impeached and removed from office, compared to 51 percent opposed.
And in Wisconsin, support for impeachment is far lower among independent voters. Just 35 percent of independents in Wisconsin say the impeachment hearings are warranted, and 33 percent say Trump should be impeached and removed from office.
The same can be said of New Hampshire:
The numbers coming out of New Hampshire similarly reflect less support for impeachment than there is nationally, with a CNN–University of New Hampshire survey finding that 42 percent support impeaching and removing Trump from office, compared to 51 percent opposed.
Clinton won New Hampshire in 2016 by fewer than 3,000 votes.
Despite this, an anonymous GOP pollster said that this is still bad news for Republicans. That impeachment approval is even this high is still ominous.
“It’s not a good thing that bare majorities oppose removing Trump from office in these key states,” said one GOP pollster who requested anonymity. “Removing the president from office should be a really big deal, almost unthinkable, and reserved for the biggest scandals or wrongdoing. So only eking out 51 percent or 52 percent opposition in these states isn’t good.”
“That said, these numbers definitely show that there’s lots of room for Democrats to handle this badly and hand Trump a second term,” the pollster continued.
What this does show, however, is that voters are more skeptical than they are sure. As the investigation proceeds, these numbers will no doubt shift, but the question is, by how much? Battleground states are currently leaning away from Trump in general, and even states where he won by double digits like South Carolina have been reduced to single digits. Should the investigation conclude that Trump did nothing wrong — again — he may experience an approval boost as Democrats once again take themselves to extremes to try to desperately prove their suspicions right.
Time will tell, but the polling proves that Trump isn’t the one who needs to fight desperately here and it’s all the Democrats’ game to lose.
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