Following reports on Ukraine call, public support for impeachment probe on the rise, polls show
Since news broke regarding President Donald Trump's July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, during which Trump repeatedly urged Zelenskiy to investigate now presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, support for an impeachment inquiry has risen, according to several national polls released in the past two weeks.
The slight bump is also reflected in ABC News partner FiveThirtyEight's impeachment tracker.
In a Washington Post/George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government poll released Tuesday morning and conducted between Oct. 1 and Sunday, 58% of Americans said that Congress should have begun an impeachment inquiry into Trump.
Additionally, 49% of Americans said the House of Representatives should vote to remove Trump from office.
Back in July, in an ABC News/Washington Post poll, only 37% of Americans said that Congress should begin impeachment proceedings.
In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday and conducted between Friday and Sunday, compared to the Post/Schar poll, fewer Americans -- 43% -- said Trump should be impeached and removed from office. However, in this poll, a combined 55% of Americans either said that there is enough evidence to impeach Trump and remove him from office now, or that Congress should hold an impeachment inquiry to determine if there's enough evidence to make that determination.
In a Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday afternoon and conducted between Friday and Monday, 53% of self-identified registered voters supported the House beginning a formal impeachment inquiry to determine whether or not to bring impeachment charges against Trump.
Like in the Post/Schar poll, support for Trump's removal from office was lower than support for the inquiry, with 45% of self-identified registered voters saying the president should be impeached and removed from office, and 49% saying he shouldn't be impeached.
This is the third poll Quinnipiac has released since a series of developments regarding Trump's actions have been reported on, and since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the beginning of an "official" impeachment inquiry of the president.
On Sept. 18, The Washington Post first reported that a whistleblower complaint, which was filed with the inspector general of the intelligence community on Aug. 12, was concerning a phone call with a "foreign leader."
On the heels of that story, between Sept. 19 and Sept. 23, Quinnipiac was conducting a national poll. In the poll, 37% of self-identified registered voters said that Trump should be impeached and removed from office, and 57% said he shouldn't be impeached. In this poll, only 4% of Republicans said the president should be impeached and removed from office compared to 73% of Democrats and 34% of independents.
On Sept. 24, after Trump had publicly acknowledged asking Zelenskiy about investigating Biden and his son, but denied there being any quid pro quo in the conversation, Pelosi announced the House would be "moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry."
On Sept. 25, the White House released a non-verbatim memorandum of the president's call, which confirmed Trump repeatedly asked Zelenskiy to work with Giuliani and U.S. Attorney General William Barr to investigation Biden and his son.
In a poll conducted by NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist College on Sept. 25, and released on Sept. 26, Americans were split in their support regarding Pelosi's announcement of a formal impeachment inquiry: 49% of Americans approved of the move and 46% of Americans disapproved of it.
But support for the House moving forward with an impeachment inquiry differed depending on party affiliation. Among Democrats, 88% approved of Pelosi's move; among Republicans, only 6% approved of it; and among independents, 44% approved of it.
On Sept. 26, both the whistleblower's complaint and the inspector general's report to the acting director of national intelligence (DNI) about the complaint were declassified and made public. Also on that day, acting DNI Joseph Maguire publicly testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, defending both the whistleblower and the handling of his/her complaint.
In a Monmouth University poll released on Oct. 1, and conducted between Sept. 23 and Sept. 29, 44% of Americans said they thought Trump should be impeached and compelled to leave office.
This was similar to results from a Quinnipiac poll released Sept. 30, which was conducted between Sept. 27 and Sept. 29. Self-identified registered voters were split on whether Trump should be impeached and removed from office: 47% said he should be and 47% said he should not be.
But in both the Oct. 1 Monmouth poll and the Sept. 30 Quinnipiac poll, there was greater support for the House conducting an impeachment inquiry.
In the Monmouth poll, just under half -- 49% -- of Americans said it was a "good idea" for the House Judiciary Committee to conduct an impeachment inquiry into the president. In the Quinnipiac poll, 52% of self-identified registered voters approved of the House beginning the inquiry to determine whether to bring impeachment charges against Trump.
However, in both the Monmouth poll and the Post-Schar poll released Tuesday, a comparable majority of Americans agreed on the inappropriateness of Trump's call with Zelenskiy.
Asked about reports that Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son, in the Monmouth poll, 63% of Americans said it was not appropriate for a president of the United States to make a request like that of a foreign leader. In the Post/Schar poll, 62% of Americans said Trump's phone call asking the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden and his son was inappropriate.
