Three major national polls have been released over the last few days, gauging public attitudes on Donald Trump’s impeachment, and the similarities in the data paint a fairly consistent picture.
There’s one …
49% of Americans now say they support impeaching Trump and removing him from office, a new NBC News/WSJ poll finds. 46% do not. That’s a reversal from a month ago, when the survey found the numbers essentially flipped.
… there’s another …
As the House moves to a new, more public phase of its impeachment inquiry, the country is sharply divided along partisan lines over whether President Trump should be impeached and removed from office, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. The poll finds that 49 percent of Americans say the president should be impeached and removed from office, while 47 percent say he should not.
… and there’s one more.
Nearly half of voters want President Trump impeached and removed from office, according to a new Fox News Poll…. Forty-nine percent want Trump impeached and removed from office, 4 percent say he should be impeached but not removed, and 41 percent oppose impeaching Trump. That’s about where things stood in early October….
FiveThirtyEight maintains a report averaging all public impeachment polling, and as of this morning, it points to a 48.4% plurality of Americans supporting the president’s impeachment. That’s awfully close to the 49% support in each of the three national polls released over the last few days.
Trump recently tweeted that impeachment is so unpopular that Democrats “have a Death Wish” by even pursuing such an effort. The latest polling suggests otherwise.
But as it turns out, that’s not all the president has to say on the matter. Consider this exchange between Trump and reporters on Sunday:
Q: Mr. President, according to several recent polls, more Americans want you to be impeached and removed from office than the number of Americans who don’t.
TRUMP: Well, you’re reading the wrong polls. You’re reading the wrong polls.
Q: Fox News, Wall Street Journal, NBC, ABC, Washington Post — all of those polls.
TRUMP: You’re read- — let me just tell you, I have the real polls. I have the real polls.
The president eventually encouraged reporters to “look at the polls that came out this morning.” In context, I’m still not sure what he was referring to: the polls that came out that morning were the ones showing a plurality of Americans supporting his impeachment and removal from office.
Regardless, what stood out for me was his reference to “real polls.” We’re apparently supposed to believe independent data from some of the nation’s largest and most reliable pollsters are “wrong,” while hidden survey results that tell Trump what he wants to hear are “real.”
We recently discussed the president’s commitment to poll denialism. It should concern his supporters that the problem appears to be getting worse.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."