In a new ABC News/ Ipsos survey, a full 58 percent of respondents overall said that Donald Trump should have been convicted at his recent Senate impeachment trial, which concluded over the weekend. That trial unfolded after the House impeached Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection over his role in inspiring a mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 and attempted to forcibly stop the Congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory. For months prior to the rioting, Trump spread the deranged lie that the 2020 presidential election was rigged for Biden, and the rioters used this exact idea as a pretense.
58% of Americans say Trump should have been convicted, according to an ABC/Ipsos poll.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 15, 2021
Compared with a Monmouth University survey from last year around the time of the conclusion of Trump’s first impeachment trial, support for convicting Trump has risen. In the Monmouth survey, 49 percent of respondents overall said that they approved of the Senate’s first acquittal of the then-president, and 47 percent disapproved. That first trial was over charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after Trump attempted to bribe Ukraine into investigating the Biden family ahead of the 2020 presidential election. At the conclusion of those proceedings, only one Senate Republican — Mitt Romney — voted to convict Trump. This time, seven Senate Republicans voted for conviction.
The support from seven Senate Republicans for conviction was not enough to actually enact the step, because conviction requires the agreement of 67 Senators, or two-thirds of the chamber. In the new ABC survey, a full 14 percent of Republican respondents said that they believe that Trump should have been convicted by the Senate — and interestingly, the seven Republican Senators who voted for conviction make up 14 percent of the GOP’s current Senate conference. Unsurprisingly, support for conviction was higher among both Democrats and independents. A full 88 percent of Democratic respondents said that they supported convicting Trump, while 64 percent of independents said the same.
Trump responded to his acquittal by the Senate with a public statement in which he insisted that his political movement has “only just begun,” suggesting that he intends to launch some kind of public political activism campaign in the near future. Theoretically, he might support primary challenges to Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment and conviction, among other possible steps in the near future.
