Zogby Poll: 53% of Americans Support
Impeachment; ImpeachPAC Announced!
Submitted by bob fertik on Fri, 2005-11-04
For Immediate
Release:
New
Zogby Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support Impeachment;
ImpeachPAC is Launched to Support
Pro-Impeachment Candidates
By a margin of
53% to 42%, Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he lied about
the war in
The nationwide
telephone poll was conducted by Zogby International, the highly-regarded
non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,200
The poll found
that 53% agreed with the statement:
"If
President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with
42% disagreed,
and 5% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 2.9%
margin of error.
"These results
are stunning," said AfterDowningStreet.org co-founder Bob Fertik. "A
clear majority of Americans now supports President Bush's impeachment if he
lied about the war. This should send shock waves through the White House - and
a wake-up call to Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who have sole power
under the Constitution to impeach President Bush."
ImpeachPAC
is Launched
In response to
the latest poll results, Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, announced the
creation of a new political action committee called ImpeachPAC, headquartered
at ImpeachPAC.org. ImpeachPAC will
support Democratic candidates who support the immediate and simultaneous
impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney for lying about
Impeachment
Supported by Majorities of Many Groups
Responses to
the Zogby poll varied by political party affiliation: 76% of Democrats favored
impeachment, compared to 50% of Independents and 29% of Republicans.
Responses also
varied by age, sex, race, and religion. 70% of those 18-29 favored impeachment,
51% of those 31-49, 50% of those 50-64, and 42% of those over 65. 56% of women
favored impeachment, compared to 49% of men. Among African Americans, 90%
favored impeachment, compared to 67% of Hispanics, and 46% of whites.
Majorities of Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Others favored impeachment, while
49% of Protestants and 46% of Born Again Christians did so.
Majorities
favored impeachment in the East (53%), West (56%), and Central states (58%),
but not the South (43%). In large cities, 58% support
impeachment; in small cities, 56%; in suburbs, 49%; in rural areas, 46%.
Support
for Impeachment Has Surged Since June
The new Zogby
poll shows a dramatic transformation in support for Bush's impeachment since
late June. (This is only the third poll that has asked Americans about
their support for impeaching Bush in 2005, despite his record-low approval
ratings.) The Zogby poll conducted June 27-29 of 905 likely voters
found that 42% agreed and 50% disagreed with the identical statement asked
about in this recent polling. This question was virtually identical to one used
in early October by Ipsos Public Affairs, which found that 50% agreed and 44%
disagreed that Congress should consider impeaching Bush if he did not tell the
truth about his reasons for war.
|
|
Zogby |
Ipsos |
Zogby ( |
Net Change |
|
Support Impeachment |
53% |
50% |
42% |
+11% |
|
Oppose Impeachment |
42% |
44% |
50% |
-8% |
|
Impeachment Margin |
+11% |
+6% |
-8% |
+19% |
After the June
poll, pollster John Zogby told the Washington Post that support for
impeachment "was much higher than I expected." At the time,
impeachment supporters trailed opponents by 8%. Now supporters outnumber
opponents by 11%, a remarkable shift of 19%.
If impeachment support
continues to grow by 3% each month, it will reach 60% in January, 65% in March,
and 70% in April.
Support
for
In August and
September of 1998, 16 major polls asked about impeaching President
Clinton (http://democrats.com/clinton-impeachment-polls). Only
36% supported hearings to consider impeachment, and only 26% supported actual
impeachment and removal. Even so, the impeachment debate dominated the news for
months, and the Republican Congress impeached
Impeachment
Support is Closely Related to Belief that Bush Lied about Iraq
The Zogby and
Ipsos polls asked about support for impeachment if Bush lied about the reasons
for war, rather than asking simply about support for impeachment. Pollsters
predict that asking simply about impeachment without any context would produce
a large number of "I don't know" responses. However, this may understate
those who support Bush's impeachment for other reasons, such as his actions
before and immediately after Hurricane Katrina, his negligence prior to 9-11,
his use of torture, and the CIA outing scandal.
Other polls
show a majority of
Passion
for Impeachment is Major Unreported Story
The strong
support for impeachment found in this poll is especially surprising because the
views of impeachment supporters are entirely absent from the broadcast and
print media, and can only be found on the Internet and in street protests. The
lack of coverage of impeachment support is due in part to the fact
that not a single Democrat in Congress has called for impeachment,
despite considerable grassroots activism by groups like Democrats.com (http://democrats.com/impeach).
The passion of
impeachment supporters is directly responsible for the new poll commissioned by
After Downing Street. After the Zogby poll in June, activists led by Democrats.com
urged all of the major polling organizations to include an impeachment question
in their upcoming polls. But none of the polling organizations were willing to
do so for free, so on September 30,
AfterDowningStreet.org posted a request for donations to fund paid polls (http://afterdowningstreet.org/polling).
People responded with small donations (on average $27) which quickly added up
to over $10,000. After
Footnotes:
1. AfterDowningStreet.org is a
rapidly growing coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political
activist groups that was created on
2. The Ipsos
Public Affairs poll and the new Zogby poll results cited above refer to surveys
of
3. Here are
the complete data tables from all three polls.
November Zogby: Adults,
and Likely
Voters.
October Ipsos: Adults,
and definitions of regions.
June Zogby: Likely Voters.