1. The polling we have so far mostly shows an uptick in support for impeachment. But according to the initial polls at least, public opinion doesn’t seem to have shifted dramatically from where it was following both the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on April 18 and Mueller’s testimony before Congress on July 24. The majority of Americans still do not favor impeachment, although more than two-thirds of Democrats do.
2. A majority of Americans do disapprove of Trump’s actions. A YouGov/Economist poll released Wednesday found that 52 percent of Americans said it is inappropriate for the president to request a foreign government open an investigation into a potential political opponent.
3. In that same poll, 62 percent of Americans said that it is inappropriate for the president to threaten withholding foreign aid to a country if it refuses to “take an action which personally benefits the President.”
4. In the Quinnipiac University poll that came out after the publication of the Mueller report, 54 percent of Americans thought Trump had “attempted to derail or obstruct the investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 election,” and 46 percent thought Trump had committed crimes while president, but only 29 percent said Congress should begin the impeachment process.
5. All of this polling is really preliminary. Even over the course of this week, a lot has happened that the polls don’t account for.
6. Not all of these polls capture changes in public opinion following Pelosi’s announcement of an official impeachment inquiry, nor do they capture public reactions to the memo of the phone call between Trump and Zelensky that the White House released on Wednesday. And none of them factor in the testimony of Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire before Congress on Thursday morning.
7. According to a Marist poll conducted Wednesday, 32 percent of Americans said they weren’t closely following news about the impeachment inquiry
8. A Selzer poll of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa showed Sen. Elizabeth Warren as the first choice of 22 percent of voters, putting her neck-and-neck with former Vice President Joe Biden, who had 20 percent support. Bernie Sanders came in third with 11 percent. The poll, which was sponsored by the Des Moines Register, CNN and Mediacom, has a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points, which means Warren and Biden are more or less tied.
