Poll Watch: Trump, Congress, Impeachment, and Terrorist Takedowns

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll is out, and contrary to what the Tweeter in Chief believes, things are not all sunshine and lollipops out here in America.

First, the small print: the survey was taken 10/27 - 10/30, (before the vote to move forward with a formal impeachment inquiry) and included a random sample of 1003 adults, 65% of whom were reached by cell phone, with the remaining 35% answering landline calls. The error margin is +/- 3.5%.

Here are a few highlights:

• Trump's approval rating remains underwater at -20, (38% approve, 58% disapprove);
• By +26, (54% to 28%) people think his policies make us less respected around the world; adding insult to injury on that question, President Obama was at +6;
• And, by +36 (66% to 30%), people think he acts in an unpresidential way, and 58% of the 'unpresidential' respondents believe he acts in a 'way that is damaging' to the presidency as a whole.
• Like her predecessors Newt Gingrich (-20) and Paul Ryan (-13), Nancy Pelosi (-10) is underwater on her approval rating. In her previous stint as Speaker in 2007 (+18) she joined John Boehner (+13) as House Speakers above water on this.

We're so lucky, or something.

What else do we Americans think? Let's take a look.

• 49% of us (44% strongly) believe Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 47% (37% strongly) think he shouldn't. This is reflective of results from an October WaPo/Schar School poll, where the same percentage believed he should be impeached and removed. For comparison, only 33% thought Bill Clinton should suffer the same fate. 

• A majority of us disapprove of both how the House and the president have handled the impeachment issue so far, but Trump is the big loser here, underwater by -24 compared to the House, at -7.

• A majority - 65% - think that hearings should be held in public; the survey misrepresents what's been happening so far, which have been depositions which historically have been held in private. 

• We're pretty well set in what we think of the motivations of Democrats and Republicans. 51% believe the former are  mainly interested in hurting the president, while 55% think the latter are mainly interested in helping him. We don't think the Ds are all that interested in upholding the Constitution (43%) but that's better than the Rs, at 36%. 

• And, no matter what people think about impeachment, by a net +20 (55% to 35%), we believe he did something wrong, with 47% thinking what he did was seriously wrong.

On the other hot topic of the day, the raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, we get to review our opinions on that compared to similar questions asked about President Obama's raid on Osama bin Laden.

The first question was on how much credit the president deserves for "the killing of" al-Baghdadi - even though we know, of course, that he committed suicide. And no, I don't think that's splitting hairs, I think it's truthful and honest. Similarly, I don't think it's splitting hairs to differentiate between depositions and hearings, or between a transcript and a summary memorandum... but I digress.

Here are the survey results for both presidents on the 'credit' question.

Trump's raid was perceived as making us safer than Obama's (26% to 21%)  while Obama's raid was seen to make us a bit more at risk (19% to Trump's 16%).  But overall, in both cases, more than half of us thought it would not make much difference (54% for Trump, 58% for Obama). We'll have to wait and see what happens to know for sure.