Iowa Poll: Likely Democratic caucus participants split on Donald Trump impeachment question
Tony Leys© Copyright 2019, Des Moines Register and Tribune Co.
Most leading Democratic presidential candidates want to get started on impeaching President Donald Trump, but many Iowans who plan to participate in the 2020 Democratic caucuses disagree, a new Iowa Poll shows.
Forty-eight percent of Iowa voters who plan to attend the caucuses in person say Congress should continue to investigate the president, but should not move ahead with formal impeachment proceedings, according to the new Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll.
“My reasoning is: I don’t want it to fail,” said Iowa Poll participant Dorothy Oliver of Urbandale.
Forty-two percent of Iowa voters who plan to attend the Democratic caucuses in person favor moving ahead with impeachment, the poll shows. Those voters told pollsters they agree with this statement: “Democrats in Congress would be shirking their constitutional duty if they do not proceed with impeachment as soon as possible.” Seven percent are unsure, and 2% volunteered that they don’t want Congress to investigate or didn’t mention impeachment.
Leading Democratic presidential candidates who are urging Congress to begin impeachment proceedings base their arguments on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. They cite evidence in the report that Trump and his allies allegedly obstructed Mueller’s investigation.
More of the latest Iowa Poll results and coverage
- Joe Biden leads, followed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg
- Defeating Donald Trump is the top priority for likely Democratic caucus participants
- A guide to Democrats running for president and what likely Iowa caucus participants think of them
- Democrats’ virtual caucus plans remain a mystery, even for those who intend to participate
- How proposed Democratic caucus rules make polling even harder, and how we crafted our best shot
The Iowa Poll sample of 600 registered Iowa voters includes two groups of people: 433 who plan to attend the Democratic Party’s caucuses in person, and 167 who plan to attend new virtual caucuses. The virtual caucuses will allow Iowans to caucus online or by phone. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 4.7 percentage points for the in-person group and 7.6 percentage points for the virtual group.
Oliver, 61, said Democrats in Congress should continue to seek evidence about the Trump administration’s actions. Their demands should include seeing Mueller’s full report, she said. But rushing to impeach the president could backfire and help Trump whip up his supporters, she said.
Oliver, who works in an insurance company’s claims department, said she would favor Trump’s impeachment if she was certain it would succeed.
“Let’s make sure we’re 100% sure we can get him out of there,” she said.
Oliver said she’s leaning toward supporting Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucuses. Sanders is among those demanding impeachment proceedings.
Iowa Poll participant Jason Bradley of Davenport wants Congress to start impeachment proceedings now.
Bradley, 40, who works as a respiratory therapist, said he realizes that even if the Democratic-controlled U.S. House votes to impeach the president, the Republican-led Senate is unlikely to convict Trump.
“But there comes a point where you have to have a principle, and say, ‘This is wrong,’” Bradley said of the president’s alleged misdeeds. He believes Trump has obstructed justice.
Bradley said public impeachment hearings could change minds among voters and maybe some Republican senators. “At a very minimum, I think history needs to record what happened,” he said.
Bradley said he hasn’t picked a Democratic presidential candidate yet, although he’s leaning toward former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden, the frontrunner in the new Iowa Poll, has been among the most cautious Democratic candidates when talking about the possibility of impeachment.
The last time a president was impeached was in 1998, when the Republican-led House impeached President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, for lying under oath about sexual relations with a White House intern. The Republican-led Senate declined to convict Clinton, and Democrats used the uproar to oust Republicans from the House majority in the next election.
Oliver, the Iowa Poll participant from Urbandale, is worried the same thing would happen to House Democrats if they prematurely impeach Trump.
Bradley disagrees. He said the allegations against Trump, including actions to blunt Mueller’s investigation, are more serious than those against Clinton.
The new Iowa Poll shows feelings on impeachment are similar among both groups of likely caucus participants: those who plan to attend in person and those who plan to participate virtually.
A March 2019 Iowa Poll, which included only likely in-person caucus participants and asked about possible impeachment in a different way, also indicated many Iowa Democrats were cautious about impeaching Trump.
Forty-two percent of likely 2020 Democratic caucus participants said then that they did not want presidential candidates to spend much time talking about impeachment. Thirty-three percent said they wanted presidential candidates to spend a little time talking about impeachment, and 22 percent said they wanted candidates to spend a lot of time talking about the issue.
About this poll
The Iowa Poll, conducted June 2-5, 2019, for The Des Moines Register, CNN and Mediacom by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, is based on telephone interviews with 600 registered voters in Iowa who say they will definitely or probably participate in the 2020 Democratic caucuses. These 600 likely Democratic caucus participants were sorted into two discrete groups: 433 who say they plan to attend a caucus in person and 167 who say they plan to participate online or by telephone in a virtual caucus.
Interviewers with Quantel Research contacted 3,776 randomly selected active voters from the Iowa secretary of state’s voter registration list by telephone. The sample was supplemented with additional phone number lookups. Interviews were administered in English. Responses for all contacts were adjusted by age, sex, and congressional district to reflect their proportions among active voters in the list.
Questions based on the sample of 433 voters likely to attend the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses in person have a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 percentage points. Questions based on the sample of 167 voters likely to participate in a virtual caucus have a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 7.6 percentage points. This means that if this survey were repeated using the same questions and the same methodology, 19 times out of 20, the findings would not vary from the true population value by more than plus or minus 4.7 or 7.6 percentage points, respectively. Results based on smaller samples of respondents—such as by gender or age—have a larger margin of error.
Because the proposed rules for the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses at the time this poll was conducted include a provision that the results of the in-person caucuses will account for 90 percent of delegate equivalents and the results of the virtual caucuses will account for 10 percent of the delegate equivalents, the first-choice candidate results of this poll have been reported out in three ways: 1) among likely in-person caucus attenders alone; 2) among likely virtual caucus participants alone; and 3) combined in a calculation that gives 90% weight to the preferences of the in-person attenders and 10% weight to the preferences of virtual participants.
Republishing the copyright Iowa Poll without credit to The Des Moines Register, CNN, and Mediacom is prohibited.