Half of Americans polled for a new survey said former President Donald Trump should be convicted in a Senate impeachment trial next week over his incitement of a riot at the U.S. Capitol last month, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University.
The nationwide survey found that 50 percent of respondents believe Trump should be convicted and 45 percent believe he should not be convicted, with most participants answering along party lines.
Independents polled were split, with 49 percent saying Trump should be convicted and 45 percent saying he should not be convicted. There is wide agreement on conviction within each party: 86 percent of Republicans say Trump should not be convicted, and 86 percent of Democrats say he should.
“The impeachment question is framed by two distinctly different versions of history and offers as vivid an example of the chasm between Republicans and Democrats as you can find,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement released with the results.
These findings are similar to a separate Monmouth University poll released a few weeks ago, which found that most Americans believe Trump should be impeached and convicted.
The new poll from Quinnipiac University also found that most of those polled (59 percent) do not believe there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, though nearly three-fourths of Republicans surveyed do believe there was widespread fraud.
There was strong agreement among all participants on a few subjects. Most respondents (75 percent) said they are either somewhat or very concerned about extremist violence in the U.S. Almost the same number (74 percent) believe social media platforms should be held responsible for the spread of disinformation. About 70 percent of those polled said U.S. democracy is currently threatened.
Most of the people polled do not think partisan divides were likely to improve. About 4 in 10 Americans expect partisan divisions to worsen, while about one third say they didn’t expect partisanship to change much. Only 20 percent believe partisan divisions would improve.
About 70 percent of those polled say they had not limited social interactions based on differing political beliefs. Democrats were more likely to say they lessened interactions based on political beliefs than independents or Republicans.
The poll included 1,075 participants who were surveyed from Jan. 28 to Feb. 1, with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.