MU Law Poll: Fewer Wisconsin voters think President Trump should be impeached, compared to October

MILWAUKEE -- The support for impeaching and removing President Donald Trump from office appears to be decreasing in the key swing state of Wisconsin, as Republicans rally around the embattled president, a poll released Wednesday, Nov. 20 showed.

“You’ve got Republicans coming home to Trump,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette University Law School poll.

The poll showed 40% of respondents support impeaching and removing President Trump. That is down from 44% in October. In the latest poll, 53% said they do not support President Trump’s impeachment and removal from office, up from 51% in October. Comparing the results from October and November, support for impeachment and removal declined slightly among Democrats, while opposition to removal rose slightly among Republicans.

Franklin noted that the changes were within the 4.1 percentage point margin of error, “but the shift is there.” An increase in President Trump support was also evident in several other questions asked in the survey.

The poll of 801 registered voters was taken between Nov. 13 and Nov. 17, just as Democratic-led impeachment hearings began. The prior poll was done before Democrats launched the hearings.

There was some movement among which candidates Democratic voters support. Former Vice President Joe Biden maintained his lead with 30% support, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont at 17%, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts at 15%, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 13%.

Warren had the most movement from October, dropping nine points. Buttigieg, meanwhile, was up six. He has seen similar bumps in support in polls done in states with early primaries. The margin of error in the poll of Wisconsin voters when asking only about the Democratic candidates was 6.4 points.

Wisconsin is one of four swing states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida are the others — that could determine the outcome of the 2020 election because their electorates are so evenly divided. President Trump carried Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win the state in 32 years.

The poll also measured voters’ knowledge of the issues behind the impeachment inquiry.

The ongoing hearings are focused on whether President Trump improperly withheld U.S. military aid that Ukraine needed to resist Russian aggression in exchange for Ukraine’s new president investigating President Trump political rival Joe Biden and his son. While Democrats say the request to investigate the Bidens represents a quid pro quo meant to benefit the president politically, President Trump says he was within his rights to ask the country to look into corruption and the impeachment effort is just an attempt by Democrats to remove him from office.

Fifty-two percent of poll respondents said President Trump asked the Ukraine president to investigate his political rival, while 29% said he did not. Fewer respondents, just 41%, said they believed that President Trump held up military aid to pressure Ukraine’s president to investigate President Trump’s political rivals, while 38% said he did not.

Forty-two percent said they thought President Trump did something seriously wrong, 9% thought he did something wrong, and 38% said he did nothing wrong.

President Trump’s approval rating was constant from October, with 47% approving and 51% disapproving. It was 46% approving and 51% disapproving.