Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

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 Clinton despite overwhelming public opposition.

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 four polls 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 Downing Street has spent a portion of that money on the Ipsos Poll and the two Zogby Polls.

Footnotes:

1. AfterDowningStreet.org is a rapidly growing coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups that was created on May 26, 2005, following the publication of the Downing Street Memo in London's Sunday Times on May 1. The coalition is urging Congress to begin a formal investigation into whether President Bush committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war.

2. The Ipsos Public Affairs poll and the new Zogby poll results cited above refer to surveys of U.S. adults. The June 2005 Zogby results are from a survey of likely voters. The new Zogby poll produced results for both adults and likely voters:
1/06 Zogby: Adults and Likely Voters
11/05 Zogby: Adults and Likely Voters.
10/05 Ipsos: Adults and definitions of regions.
6/05 Zogby: Likely Voters.

3. The original impeachment question was written by Zogby for their own poll in June 2005. Subsequent questions were written jointly by AfterDowningStreet.org and the pollsters. Obviously there are many ways to word polling questions, and wording has an effect on the results. The range of possible questions can be seen in the 1998 polls on impeaching President Clinton. That is why, in July 2005, we began asking the Corporate Media pollsters to conduct their own polls, using their own wording. We also support the efforts of MyDD's Chris Bowers to conduct an in-depth poll on impeachment, which should be completed soon.


More on polling:
http://www.afterdowningstreet/polling

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