When it comes to sizing up the impact of President Trump’s partisan impeachment in the House last December, it’s good to look at how he stacks up with other highly criticized presidents.
That’s exactly what pollster Jonathan Zogby of Zogby Analytics did in his latest survey. In it, he asked if voters felt that any of the last 12 presidents, dating to Dwight Eisenhower, committed impeachable offenses.
“In light of the historic impeachment of President Trump by House Democrats, it’s interesting to think what this moment in history will mean and how does it rate,” Zogby said in sharing his data.
“Although most scholars argue events can’t be defined or processed in historical terms for about 40 to 50 years after, we thought it would be interesting to see what impeachment means now for Trump, so we asked survey respondents, ‘Do you agree or disagree that each one of the following presidents committed an impeachable offense while in office,'” he said.
Richard Nixon, who quit over the Watergate scandal, was first, at 71%, followed by Bill Clinton, who lied about having sex with onetime intern Monica Lewinsky, at 61%. Trump came in third at 53%. Barack Obama was fourth at 38%.
Zogby noted that unlike with other presidents, the partisan division over Trump was epic. “The partisan lines were drawn when it comes to the impeachment of Trump; more than three-quarters of Democrats agreed he committed an impeachable offense, while 53% of Republicans disagreed. This is different than Nixon or Clinton in that all demographics, including political parties, thought they committed impeachable offenses,” he said.
The House impeached Trump on a partisan vote last month, claiming that he needed to be immediately removed from office because he is a threat to the nation and the 2020 election.
But instead of moving swiftly to hand off the case to the Senate, which conducts the impeachment trial, the House went on vacation. The Senate still doesn’t have the case.
