CNN poll: President Trump's approval steady, Dem impeachment support up

Democrats are increasingly in support of impeaching President Donald Trump and removing him from office but the majority of Americans remain opposed to the prospect, a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS shows. Trump’s approval rating, meanwhile, holds exactly even with where it was in late April – 43% approve and 52% disapprove of the President, according to the poll. That’s the case even as support for impeachment rose slightly from 37% last month to 41% now. Similarly, those backing impeachment hit 43% in December, down from CNN’s previous high mark of this question with 47% in September 2018. The new poll finds 54% are against impeachment. READ: The poll results The shift on impeachment stems mostly from a rebound in support for it among Democrats – 76% favor it currently, up from 69% in April. Whites who hold college degrees have also increased their support for impeachment. In surveys in April and March, fewer than 3 in 10 in that group favored proceedings, but that number has now climbed to 41%. April’s poll, conducted after the public release of a redacted version of the report from special counsel Robert Mueller, suggested the report had done little to move the public in favor of impeachment, and may have increased the share who felt Democrats in Congress were going too far in investigating the president. Slightly fewer now say that Democrats are overreaching in their investigations of Trump (40% feel that way in the new poll, compared with 44% in April), and a majority continue to feel that Trump is not doing enough to cooperate with those investigations (53%, was 54% in April). Surprisingly, the softening on whether Democrats are overreaching seems to come largely among Republicans: 84% said they were doing too much in April, it’s 76% now. The President’s frequent pushback on Democratic-led investigations of him is that he’s facing more investigation than any president before him, and for the most part, the public agrees: 65% say he is facing more investigations than any previous president. But the public isn’t as clear cut on whether that’s unfair to Trump. The public divides on the question of whether the investigations Trump faces are justified by the facts, 47% say they are, 44% say they are not merited based on the facts. While majorities across party lines feel Trump is facing more investigations than other presidents, there are sharp partisan divisions on whether they are justified, with 75% of Democrats saying they are and 74% of Republicans saying they are not. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who has resisted calls to open an impeachment inquiry into the President, sees her approval rating hold mostly steady in the new poll (40% view her favorably, 48% unfavorably). Notably, though, favorable views of the Speaker have climbed among more moderate and conservative Democrats, rising from 58% favorable in December just before she returned to the Speakership to 64% in February and 73% now. About two-thirds of all Americans (67%) say that Mueller ought to publicly testify before Congress, including majorities of Democrats (88%) and independents (62%) and about half of Republicans (49%). The survey had been in the field for one night before Mueller made his first public remarks about the investigation, but that statement does not appear to have influenced opinions about whether he ought to testify. Support for Mueller testifying publicly held roughly steady over each of the four nights of interviewing in the poll. Seventy-six percent of Americans say it’s unlikely that Trump and the Democrats in Congress will be able to work together on other issues while investigations of Trump are ongoing, and more say that lack of cooperation is Trump’s fault (36%) than feel it is the Democrats’ fault (31%). And a majority say they disapprove (56%) of the way the president is handling his relationship with Democrats in Congress. Just 33% say they approve. Trump’s overall approval rating is about on par with Ronald Reagan’s rating at this point in 1983, and above Jimmy Carter’s 32% at this point in 1979. The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS May 28 through 31 among a random national sample of 1,006 adults reached on landlines or cellphones by a live interviewer. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

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CNN Poll: Democratic support for impeachment rises, Trump approval steady