Americans are evenly divided on whether President Donald Trump should be impeached. Forty-nine percent think he should be impeached and removed from office and 49 percent are against it, according to results from a new NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll.
Voters are sharply divided along party lines. Nine in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are against impeachment and 89 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners are in favor of impeachment. Independents who don’t lean toward either party are more split with a 53 percent majority saying Trump should be impeached and 44 percent saying he should not.
Among independent voters who think Trump should be impeached, 96 percent said they disapprove of the job he is doing and only 3 percent approve. But 24 percent of independents who do not think Trump should be impeached still disapprove of the job he is doing, indicating job approval and impeachment do not necessarily go hand-in-hand for independents.
On the other hand, most Republicans who are against impeachment approve of Trump (95 percent) and most Democrats who favor impeachment disapprove of him (91 percent.)
Opinion on impeachment is plainly split by party and because the national poll has a large sample size, it’s worth exploring the 10 percent of Democrats who think Trump should not be impeached and 9 percent of Republicans who think he should be. Who are these party outliers?
Republicans Who Think Trump Should Be Impeached
Of Republicans who say Trump should be impeached, 88 percent disapprove of his job performance. Half of the impeachment-supporting GOP group identifies as moderate with 42 percent saying they voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 27 percent said they did not vote in the last presidential election at all.
The racial composition of Republicans in favor of impeachment is very different from that of those against it. Among Republicans who think he should be impeached, 50 percent are white. Among Republicans who don't think he should be impeached, 82 percent are white.
A sizable 23 percent of Republicans who think Trump should be impeached are Hispanic and 20 percent are black.
Republicans who think Trump should be impeached also tend to be younger. Sixty-five percent are under 45 years old, indicating that young GOP voters may be against their party on impeachment.
On the issues, 20 percent of these voters said the economy is the issue that matters most, followed by government ethics at 19 percent and health care at 19 percent.
Democrats Who Do Not Think Trump Should Be Impeached
About 6 in 10 Democrats who don’t think Trump should be impeached still disapprove of the job he’s doing as president. Still, 4 in 10 of those Democrats approve of the job he’s doing, compared to only 2 percent approval among Democrats who think he should be impeached.
Fifty-four percent of this group identify as moderate, 24 percent identify as conservative and only 22 percent identify as liberal.
Twenty-seven percent of Democrats who don’t support impeachment didn’t vote in 2016 and 24 percent said they voted for Trump.
Again, in this group, a majority are white (56 percent) but 21 percent are Hispanic and 17 percent are black.
Forty-three percent of Democrats who don’t think Trump should be impeached are under 45 years.
Government ethics is the issue that matters most to Democrats (23 percent), followed by the environment at 20 percent and health care at 19 percent.
The NBC News|SurveyMonkey national poll was conducted Oct. 8-22 among 18,101 registered voters with an error estimate of plus or minus 1.1 percentage points. Respondents for the nonprobability surveys were selected from the almost 3 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. For full results and methodology, click here.
