This article is part of an Elections 2018 package for Beast Inside members only. Join now to enjoy our special midterms coverage, including an exclusive elections poll and more!
More Democrats say they want to investigate and potentially impeach Donald Trump once the next Congress convenes than pursue fixes to the nation’s health care system, according to a new public opinion poll.
The poll, commissioned by Ipsos for The Daily Beast, asked respondents what lawmakers’ first priority should be after this year’s midterm elections. Of the five choices, 37 percent of self-identified Democrats favored “investigating and potentially impeaching President Trump,” which clocked in with 37 percent support. The next popular was “fixing problems with our health care system,” at 34 percent; followed by immigration reform at 13 percent; additional tax cuts and addressing the opioid epidemic both came in at four percent, just behind “other.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The findings underscore how anger with the president continues to animate much of the Democratic electorate. It also suggests that party leadership could find itself with a disaffected base should it win control of at least one chamber of Congress and not use that newly-acquired power to aggressively confront Trump. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has spoken about launching sweeping investigations into the Trump administration should Democrats take over the House. But she has said that impeachment itself is “not a priority.”
The results are a bit more muddied when respondents were given 13 total options for top priorities for the next Congress to address, and asked to rank their support for those priorities on a scale. In that scenario, pursuits like passing universal background checks for gun purchases, balancing the budget, Medicare-for-All, and environmental protections had higher aggregate scores.
Beneath the toplines, however, were data points showing that one of the most animating issues for Democratic voters remains aggressively investigating and potentially impeaching Trump.
The survey asked respondents to rate those 13 priorities on a scale of one-to-seven with seven being the highest priority and one being the lowest. For self-identified Democrats, 43 percent gave “investigating and potentially impeaching President Trump” a seven. The only other pursuit to score that high was universal background checks, which 58 percent of self-identified Democrat gave a seven.
But while a desire for investigating and potentially impeaching Trump may be a pursuit that a good chunk of the Democratic electorate passionately wants, it’s not universally desired by others. Just 39 percent of self-identified Independents listed it as a high priority (defined by those who gave it a rating of five, six, or seven) and 49 percent called it a low priority (defined as those who gave it a rating of one, two, or three).
As for Republicans, the main issue that they want lawmakers to pursue in the next Congress is “balancing the federal budget” (which got an 81 percent high priority rating) followed by “passing tax cuts for the middle class” (at 77 percent). With Democrats likely to take over the House and Republicans keeping control of the Senate, neither of those is likely to happen. The one thing that may is the confirmation of new judges, since it only requires Senate votes. Only 49 percent of self-identified Republican respondents labeled that a “high priority.”
The Ipsos poll was conducted between Oct. 30 and Nov. 1, 2018. It included a sample of roughly 1,688 registered voters—642 Democrats, 643 Republicans, and 292 Independents—who were interviewed online in English.
