Saturday, July 07, 2007

Impeachment Tide

From CBS News, and their partner Political Animal, comes coverage of a poll on impeachment, conducted by the "American Research Group, a non-partisan outfit":

Question:
Do you favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush?

7/5/07 Favor Oppose Undecided

All Adults 45% 46% 9%
Voters 46% 44% 10%

Democrats (38%) 69% 22% 9%
Republicans (29%) 13% 86% 1%
Independents (33%) 50% 30% 20%

3/15/06 42% 49% 9%

Based on 1,100 completed telephone interviews among a random sample of adults nationwide July 3-5, 2007. The theoretical margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points, 95% of the time. Of the total sample, 933 interviews were completed among registered voters.

Question:
Do you favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney?

7/5/07 Favor Oppose Undecided

All Adults 54% 40% 6%
Voters 50% 44% 6%

Democrats (38%) 76% 24% -
Republicans (29%) 17% 83% -
Independents (33%) 51% 29% 20%

Based on 1,100 completed telephone interviews among a random sample of adults nationwide July 3-5, 2007. The theoretical margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points, 95% of the time. Of the total sample, 933 interviews were completed among registered voters.

Yet, it appears that pollsters are shy about even bringing up the topic:

Independent national pollsters rarely ever ask Americans for their opinions about impeachment. In fact, when Washington Post polling director Richard Morin started receiving questions about it from readers, he got a little snippy about it, and refused to take the questions seriously.

It's hardly a mystery -- the notion of impeaching Bush and/or Cheney is still considered a "fringe" concept that "serious" people are supposed to reject out of hand. And yet, for a radical idea, a surprising number of Americans seem to think impeachment is a good idea. .....t's hard to compare these numbers against other recent polls -- news outlets are generally afraid of the "I" question -- but once an idea is embraced by nearly half the country, I think it's probably safe to stop calling it "fringe."

1 comment:

Broca said...

This isn't an impeachment tide. Look at the (meager) trend line for the data. It is not like the number in support is somehow surging.

Also, the margin of error for the poll does not allow us to say for certain whether there has been a significant change in opinion.

Plus, these numbers have quite a ways to go before I could say that impeachment is the right way to deal with this president.

p.s. I will have more to say about this tomorrow.