Multiple polls now show that support for impeaching Donald Trump has grown in the days since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal inquiry.
An NPR/PBS/Marist poll found that 49% of Americans now support impeachment, a 10-point jump from May when just 39% of respondents said an inquiry should be opened following release of the redacted Mueller report. Opposition to impeachment currently sits at 46%.
Morning Consult/Politico also released a poll showing an eye-popping jump of 7 points from when the impeachment question was asked just last weekend, Sept. 20-22 (Pelosi announced the formal inquiry on Sept. 24 and the follow-up poll was conducted Sept. 24-26). In the poll, 43% of voters support impeachment proceedings (up from 36%) while 43% also oppose (down 6 points from 49%). Taken together, the data represent a net swing of 13 points.
Support for impeachment in the poll gained 6 points among independents (from 33% to 39%), and it even gained 5 points among Republicans (from 5% to 10%).
Both polls registered a relatively high level of engagement on the topic. In the Morning Consult poll, two-thirds of voters said they had heard either "some" or "a lot" about Trump pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and withholding military aid from the country. The NPR/PBS/Marist poll similarly found that 7 in 10 Americans say they are paying attention to the news.
High engagement is good for the Democrats, assuming they use the tools they have to harness it. The more people learn, the more probability that support for impeachment will continue to increase.