The vast majority of Americans are not surprised that President Trump encouraged the Ukrainian president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, and fewer than half see it as a “very serious” problem, an ABC News-Ipsos poll released Sunday indicates.
Just about half of Americans said they are “not surprised at all” to hear of Trump’s actions. An additional 32 percent said they are “not surprised.”
The national poll, conducted Friday and Saturday, also finds that 63 percent of adults say it is a serious problem that Trump pushed the president of Ukraine to investigate the son of his potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden in a July call that has sparked an extraordinary whistleblower complaint and led Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry. Less than half of the public, 43 percent, said Trump’s action was “very serious.”
The survey did not ask whether Trump should be impeached or about accusations that White House officials tried to keep the July phone call secret, a claim laid out by an unidentified whistleblower in a seven-page complaint released Thursday.
Several reaction polls released in the past week found an uptick in the percentage of Americans in favor of impeachment. An NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist survey found 49 percent approval for impeachment and 46 percent against. After the release of former special counsel Robert Mueller III’s report on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election and throughout the summer, most polls showed majorities opposing impeachment.
House Democrats are gambling that more of the public will support their decision to move ahead with a formal impeachment inquiry as the investigation progresses. Until this week, about half of Democratic caucus members wanted to launch impeachment proceedings. By Friday, all but 11 were on board.
Despite the Ukraine story dominating headlines, just about one-quarter of adults say they have followed the news “very closely.” More than 6 in 10 say they are following the issue at least “somewhat closely.”
The survey was conducted Sept. 27-28 using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, an ongoing survey panel recruited through random sampling of U.S. households. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.
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