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POLITICS

Voters Say Trump Reelection More Likely, Reject Impeachment As Strategy

Voters see more chance for President Trump’s reelection these days and strongly believe that impeachment is not the best strategy for Democrats running for Congress.

In fact, just 15% of Likely U.S. Voters believe focusing on the president’s possible impeachment is a better campaign strategy for Democratic congressional candidates than focusing on policy areas where they disagree with Trump. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 70% think focusing on policy differences is a better political strategy. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Forty-one percent (41%) now believe the president will be reelected in 2020, up from 34% in late December. Twenty-six percent (26%) still think Trump will be defeated by the Democratic nominee, but 31% felt that way four months ago.

Twenty-five percent (25%) say the president will be impeached before serving his first full-term in office. That compares to 29% in the previous survey.

A sizable majority of Democrats agrees that policy differences, not impeachment, is the better political strategy, although a plurality of voters in the opposing party still says the Republican president won’t finish his first term in office.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on May 2-3, 2018 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Trump's overall job approval in the Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll has been running in the high 40s to just over 50% in surveys since his State of the Union address in late January. He’s been running slightly ahead of where Barack Obama was at this stage of his presidency.

Interestingly, Republicans (25%) are far more likely than Democrats (8%) and unaffiliated voters (13%) to be undecided over whether impeachment or policy differences is the better campaign strategy for Democratic congressional candidates.

But 71% of Republicans expect Trump to be reelected in 2020. Just 14% of Democrats agree, but only 36% predict that their party’s nominee will defeat him. Forty-one percent (41%) of Democratic voters still believe the president will be impeached.

In late December, 65% of GOP voters thought Trump would be reelected. Among Democrats, 42% felt their nominee would win in 2020, while 45% said the president would be impeached before that.

The most noticeable change over the past four months is among voters not affiliated with either major political party. Just 28% said Trump would be reelected in December, but now 38% feel that way. Twenty-one percent (21%) of unaffiliateds believe he will be impeached, but that compares to 31% in the earlier survey.

Even among voters who see impeachment as the better strategy for this year’s Democratic congressional candidates, just 37% think Trump is likely to be impeached before serving his first full term in office.

If the elections for Congress were held today, the Rasmussen Reports Generic Congressional Ballot finds that 45% of voters would choose the Democratic candidate, while 40% would vote for the Republican.

Just over half of Republicans - and one-third of all voters - say they see eye-to eye politically with the president. The rest tend to believe he's too conservative. Few accuse him of being too liberal.

Love him or hate him, voters agree Trump is charting the course for the country, and no one else is even close.

Voters increasingly believe that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign is politically biased and tend to think he is unlikely to nail the president for anything criminal.

Former FBI Director James Comey who was fired last year by Trump charged in a recent TV interview that he is “morally unfit” to be president. Voters agree that Trump and disgraced former President Bill Clinton are two of a kind as far as morality is concerned. Clinton was impeached by Congress in 1998 for perjury and obstructing justice in cases related to alleged sexual misconduct. He is only the second U.S. president in history to be impeached.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on May 2-3, 2018 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Rasmussen Reports is a media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion information.

We conduct public opinion polls on a variety of topics to inform our audience on events in the news and other topics of interest. To ensure editorial control and independence, we pay for the polls ourselves and generate revenue through the sale of subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising. Nightly polling on politics, business and lifestyle topics provides the content to update the Rasmussen Reports web site many times each day. If it's in the news, it's in our polls. Additionally, the data drives a daily update newsletter and various media outlets across the country.

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