Only 36 percent of Americans believe that President Trump should be re-elected to a second term, according to a new poll released Wednesday.
The survey by Monmouth University found that Trump is well underwater with independent voters, and a double-digit percentage of Republicans want to give him the boot in 2020 — but the total electorate isn’t ready to impeach him before then.
Overall, 59 percent of Americans want to see Trump leave office after one term, while 36 percent disagree. Among likely voters, the percentage is nearly identical: 58 percent say Trump should not be re-elected, and 37 percent say he should.
That compares to Trump’s recent job approval rating of 43 percent.
“It’s interesting that the number of Americans who feel Trump deserves re-election is actually smaller than the number who give him a positive job rating. It seems that some Americans are okay with Trump as president now but feel that four years might be enough,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a statement.
Unsurprisingly, the numbers are strikingly partisan: 92 percent of Democrats oppose Trump’s re-election, joined by 16 percent of Republicans, a number the pollsters called “small but not trivial.” More worrying for the Trump administration: 59 percent of independent voters say Trump should not get a second term.
In terms of the new Congress, the poll found that a majority of Americans — 52 percent — believe it’s a “major priority” for the new Congress to be a check on Trump, while 20 percent said it’s a minor priority and 25 percent said it’s not important.
But as of now, most Americans don’t want impeachment to be on Congress’s agenda. The survey found that 36 percent of Americans believe that Trump should be impeached, while 59 percent disagree.
“The new Democratic majority in the House has to perform a bit of a balancing act. Most Americans want Congress to rein in Trump’s excesses, but it has to be done in a way that does not look too partisan,” said Murray.
