How Impeachment Is Polling – The New York Times

I have a confession: When I realized that today was exactly 30 days from the start of the impeachment inquiry, I didn’t believe it.

Here in Washington, the fight over impeachment has become so all-consuming so very quickly that I can barely remember the before. It is always impeachment and always has been impeachment. Impeachment is a lifestyle. A state of being.

I realize, of course, that voters — people who presumably have lives that revolve around more than the president’s tweets and closed-door testimony and SCIFs — may be watching the situation slightly less obsessively.

Or maybe not. A series of new polls out this week shows there are plenty of signs that voters have been following the impeachment inquiry and that the latest developments have begun to shape their opinions.

Here’s some of what we learned this week about how the country is viewing impeachment.

President Trump has a loyal — but diminishing — core of support.

Opposition to impeachment among Republicans remains above 90 percent in most surveys. In a CNN poll, for example, just 6 percent of Republicans said they favored impeaching and removing Mr. Trump. The president’s strongest base of support: white evangelicals and Republicans who rely on Fox News as their primary news source.

But the president is losing support in places that matter the most for his re-election.

The Times and Siena College surveyed the six closest states carried by the president in 2016 and found that registered voters in those states supported the impeachment investigation, 50 percent to 45 percent.

A Marquette Law School poll of registered voters in Wisconsin found that 46 percent thought there was enough cause now for Congress to hold impeachment hearings — a 17-point jump from a survey conducted in April after the release of Attorney General William P. Barr’s letter describing the Mueller report.

He’s also losing support among key groups of voters.

A new Quinnipiac poll found an eight-point jump since last week among independents who said they approved of the inquiry. That’s a notable shift over the course of seven days.

Among white women without a college degree, who helped put Mr. Trump over the top in 2016, 40 percent now say they support impeaching and removing Mr. Trump, compared with 29 percent who said so in mid-September, according to a Public Religion Research Institute survey.

But impeachment doesn’t equal removal.

In the Times/Siena poll of swing states, even though half of registered voters supported the impeachment inquiry, a majority also opposed removing Mr. Trump from office, 53 percent to 43 percent.

One bonus data point: People are really, really pumped to vote next year.

The CNN poll found that 47 percent of registered voters were “extremely enthusiastic” about voting in the presidential election — 15 points or so higher than in 2016 and the largest number recorded by CNN. An additional 24 percent said they were “very enthusiastic.”

Of course, it’s easier to say you’re enthusiastic about voting than to actually take the time to vote. But if those numbers hold, they suggest a potential turnout rate of as much as 70 percent. That’s a level not seen since 1900, when the country was much smaller and half the population — women, duh — couldn’t vote.

Drop us a line!

We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? We’ll try to answer it. Have a comment? We’re all ears. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

With the impeachment inquiry racing ahead, it can be hard to keep track of the stream of new developments. So our colleagues from the Impeachment Briefing newsletter have generously volunteered to catch us up every Thursday on what has happened during the week.

• There was “incredibly damning” testimony. William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, directly tied the decision to withhold from Ukraine nearly $400 million in military aid to President Trump’s demands for politically motivated investigations. In his opening statement, he said the aid freeze would have “undoubtedly” cost Ukrainian lives. Democrats who came out of the closed-door hearing were stunned — one congressman called it a “sea change” in the investigation.

• Republicans disrupted a witness. Dozens of Republican members of Congress stormed into a secure part of the Capitol where a Pentagon official was preparing to testify on Wednesday, delaying her hearing by five hours. Republicans said they were protesting the private nature of the proceedings, which have been closed to the public but open to members of both parties who sit on the three committees conducting the inquiry.

• We got a new timeline. House Democrats privately admitted that the investigation was likely to now extend into the Christmas season (they had previously said Thanksgiving). That’s partly because they are planning a series of high-profile public hearings designed to make the best possible case for removing Mr. Trump from office.

You can sign up for the Impeachment Briefing newsletter here.

Nats Fever has a theme song: Baby Shark. Doo doo doo doo doo doo.

Bring it home this weekend, boys!

Were you forwarded this newsletter? Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox.

Thanks for reading. Politics is more than what goes on inside the White House. On Politics brings you the people, issues and ideas reshaping our world.

Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.