When times turn tough, presidents can hop on Air Force One to escape the country for a while and stride purposefully across the world stage. But the world stage was not so friendly this week for President Trump, who landed back in Washington on Wednesday night to confront a grim […] Read more »
Legal Experts — And Americans — Weigh In On Impeachment
The impeachment inquiry on Wednesday moved to the House Judiciary Committee, with legal experts giving testimony about whether President Trump committed an impeachable offense. We review that testimony in this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. We also speak with Clifford Young of Ipsos about the latest results of the […] Read more »
The Impeachment Hearings Just Confirmed Voters’ Preexisting Opinions
The first phase of the impeachment process is over, and according to our impeachment tracker, public opinion on impeaching and removing President Trump has remained largely steady through most of November, with roughly 47 percent of Americans supporting impeachment and 44 percent opposed. And in our latest survey with Ipsos, […] Read more »
Adam Schiff’s post-hearing review: He got nowhere
Twenty years ago, after the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the departure of Speaker Newt Gingrich, I left my post as the speaker’s director of planning and opted to go into the business of survey research. My motivation wasn’t a great desire to enter the world of campaign politics. I […] Read more »
Americans are split on impeachment, just like they were before the public hearings
Throughout more than two months of the Democrats’ House impeachment inquiry, two critical questions have loomed: How will the American public react to what it uncovers? And will it help or hurt President Trump’s chances at reelection in 2020? So far, four dozen national and state polls have been conducted […] Read more »
Impeachment polls and the risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy
… Impeachment polls matter; as I’ve noted many times (and will surely have to note again), impeachment is more a political process than a judicial one. Poll movement over time matters, too. Nonetheless, the widespread notion that support for impeachment is stagnant is a selective interpretation. As Nieman Lab’s Joshua […] Read more »