A recent poll found that 43 percent of Americans want President Donald Trump to be impeached by Congress, a five-point increase from the 38 percent who felt that way last week.
This is the result from a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll, one which also found that 45 percent of Americans don't want to impeach Trump and that (again) 45 percent approve of Trump's performance as president. By contrast, a whopping 50 percent disapprove of how Trump has conducted himself in the Oval Office.
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There is a predictable partisan split on the impeachment issue, with 71 percent of self-identified Democrats supporting it and 76 percent of self-identified Republicans opposing it.
If the figures for Trump are analyzed beyond that one poll, they become much less promising for the president. An analysis of all polls by FiveThirtyEight found that on average only 39.1 percent approve of the president's performance so far, compared to 54.1 percent who disapprove of it. When compared to his 12 predecessors, Trump surpasses only one of them when it comes to popularity at this point in his presidency: Bill Clinton, whose approval rating was a mere 36.8 percent at 132 days into his first term.
Nine of the 12 presidents had approval ratings of at least 60 percent, including Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Barack Obama.
By contrast, Gerald Ford was at 39.9 percent at this point in his presidency and George W. Bush was at 53.7 percent, figures that were much lower than normal, but still higher than Trump is right now.
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