President Trump’s support has dropped slightly among Republicans going into his Senate impeachment trial, according to a Hill-HarrisX poll released on Tuesday.
Of those polled, 86 percent of Republicans said they approve of Trump’s job performance. This marks a 4-point drop from his previous all-time high of 90 percent in the Jan. 3-4 survey.
However, Trump also saw an uptick in support among independent voters, which increased from 40 percent to 43 percent since early January.
Impeachment hasn’t had a significant impact on Trump’s overall approval rating — if anything, the process has helped boost his standing.
Following the public impeachment hearings, Trump’s approval rating neared 50 percent in December, up from 46 percent earlier that month. In the latest Hill-HarrisX survey, however, his approval rating has wavered only slightly from the previous poll at 47 percent.
The survey comes as the GOP-controlled Senate kicks off Trump’s impeachment trial this week.
The Democrat-controlled House voted in late December to impeach Trump on two articles of impeachment — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The charges allege that Trump abused his power by leveraging military aid in exchange for Ukraine to launch investigations into the president’s political rivals. The House also alleges that the president obstructed the congressional inquiry into these dealings. The Senate is now in the process of taking up both articles for consideration, though senators continue to debate the impeachment rules.
Trump’s lawyers have called the articles “constitutionally invalid,” and filed a brief urging the Senate to “swiftly” reject the impeachment charges.
The Hill-HarrisX survey was conducted between Jan. 13-14 and surveyed 1,001 registered voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
—Tess Bonn
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