With the recent news of an impeachment inquiry on Trump, public opinion polling is important to gauging the current political climate. One poll by
Morning Consult highlights that, out of 1640 registered voters, there has been a 7% increase in overall voters favoring impeachment and a
6% decrease in voter disapproval of impeachment within the last week. Not surprisingly, there is a stark divide between Democrat and Republican
stance. Within the span of a week, Democrats increased their approval of impeachment by 13% while Republicans increased by 5%, with a majority
still disapproving impeachment, as shown by the graph above. Even with this new scandal, Trump has a 42.1% approval rating (FiveThirtyEight
link above).
These poll results seem logical. After all, the recreated transcript of Trump’s phone call is out in the open and the event leading up to the phone call
(Trump freezing financial aid) seems all too convenient to be a coincidence.
Of course, these results are not the absolute fact. There is a margin of error (+/- 2% in this case) that can skew the data and public opinion will
change as more information disseminates through mass media. Since this impeachment inquiry only recently began, people have not had the
time to form solid opinions nor have they received enough information to make a final judgement. The media coverage on Trump’s reactions,
Congress’s decisions, and other politicians’ opinions in the coming weeks will be important influences on public opinion.
What other questions or information could polling companies ask to better gauge public opinion? What do you make of this data?
7 comments:
I think that, while many people would like to see Trump impeached (as we see with the approval rating increasing), I'm not sure that many people know the reasons behind the call for impeachment. I'm also pretty sure the majority of Americans believe impeachment means automatic removal from office, whereas it's a much more complicated process than that (I know that this was my belief until last year). As we have been discussing in class, polls can be a trivial source of data because many people state their opinion without really knowing what the question is asking.
I definitely agree with you, Olivia, and even though there is a margin of error of +/- 2%, which seems really slim and can appear to be statistically significant, the poll itself could hold uninformed votes/bandwagoning through political parties could have taken place (leading to the apparent polarization of political parties). In regards to asking a follow-up question - I would want to see if people think if Trump's actions are simply deemed as legal, without of course mentioning Trump since it might skew voters to associate him with the republican party and can create more bandwagoning. If those people think that this action is illegal but agree that Trump should not be impeached, then there is something fishy happening with the polls even more...
In connection to that follow-up question, in a CNN interview with Rep. Jim Jordan, the representative does not admit that what the president did was wrong but rather focuses on how Biden's son was part of a lucrative business. After potentially watching videos such as these, it might even sway some of the American people to believe that what Trump did was absolutely right and believe that he might not be impeached. Connecting from what we learned in class, is the public turning a blind eye or naively believing what they hear on the media? Maybe...
Link to the video if you want to watch two people attack each other in an interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjSeAVB2gqs
Impeachment proceedings is procedural. It is not an official vote for removal from office., but rather to begin a trial in the senate on whether the president has acted against the laws of the Constitution. Just because there is a impeachment procedure, doesn't necessarily mean Trump will be removed from office. I don't believe the public understands that even if the Trump is impeached by the House of Representatives, he is not removed from office as that is up to the Senate which is in republican control. Thus making it highly unlikely for the Senate to remove the president form office. So I believe that many people think that impeachment means removal from congress which is not the case, it is merely the first step. A better question to ask would be, "do you believe President Trump should be removed from office based on violation of the constitutional law?". Another question you could ask is, "if the house of representatives impeach the president without removal from office, is that enough punishment for his actions in office?".
As students have previously said in the thread above, many people do not understand what impeachment actually is. It is not immediate removal of Trump from the office but rather a long process in which the Senate ends up making the decision. By the time the decision actually occurs, next year's election would have already come. Also the data that is shown could be just due to non random sampling. Perhaps one day they interviewed people who liked Trump's policies more as compared to the next few days. We cannot rely on one finding over the span of a week to get all of our information from. They could try doing multiple polls using different word choices to see if there may be any discrepancies there. Those findings may help explain the drastic difference within a matter of a week in the poll.
Rather than only asking questions to produce results on whether or not the public approves or disapproves of possible impeachment for Trump, I think it would be interesting to ask questions like "Do you think a majority of Americans approve or disapprove of Trump's impeachment?" and "Do you think Trump will be impeached?" as an addition. This could potentially reveal how much Americans actually believe in our democracy; for example, what if a majority of people said that they approved of Trump's impeachment and also thought that most of their fellow Americans did as well, but results showed that they also did not believe Trump would be impeached despite current public opinion? It might show how much Americans have lost faith in our government or democracy in general. Not that I'm saying this particular situation would be the outcome, but I think it could produce some interesting results to analyze.
Like others before me have said, I think it's a good idea for pollsters to be asking personal questions instead of party type of questions. For example, "As of today, do you think Trump will be impeached?" and have the answer choices like most likely, yes, or no. However, the peoples' opinion on Trump's impeachment will fluctuate because every day there is new pieces of evidence that make one think, "Oh yeah, this will definitely impeach Trump" or "Wow, how could a human being possibly do this type of stuff?" It's important to note that there are many different types of people in this world who have very strict ideas on hypothetical possibilities. Who knows, will he be impeached?
A problem with the data gathered from the poll is that the participants might have a lack of knowledge on the topic of impeachment. As stated before, some people believe impeachment is defined as the immediate removal from office, when in reality it is part of the process of removing one from office, beginning with charging them. After one is impeached, the Senate holds a trial requiring a ⅔ majority vote of the members to remove one from office. Public opinion could better be gathered if polling companies asked people questions where they do not have a lack of knowledge. An example of this would be asking people if they are satisfied with having Trump as president.
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