New poll on the eve of Trump's impeachment trial finds that 51% of Americans think he should be removed from office

The poll, which was taken between January 16-19, found that 51% of Americans say the Senate should convict Trump in his impeachment trial, which would trigger his removal from office.
The House of Representatives voted last month to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Ahead of his trial this week there has been an uptick in public sentiment in favor of Trump's impeachment and removal from office.
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A slender majority of Americans believe the Senate should vote to convict President Donald Trump and remove him from office, according to a new CNN poll .

51% of Americans polled said that the Senate should vote to remove Trump, while 45% said the Senate should vote to acquit him.

CNN's poll also found that 58% of Americans believe the president abused his power and 57% believe he obstructed the inquiry by Congress into the matter.

These statistics represent an uptick in public sentiment against the president across almost every measure.

A Fox News poll last month found that 50% of voters believed Trump should be impeached and removed from office, 53% believed he abused his power, and 48% believed he obstructed Congress.

The House of Representatives voted to impeach the president last month for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Both charges relate to his efforts to strongarm Ukraine into pursuing investigations that would be politically beneficial to him, while withholding vital military aid and a White House meeting from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump's trial in the Senate officially kicked off last week when the House impeachment managers officially read the articles of impeachment into the Senate record and senators were sworn in.

But the key portion of the trial during which the impeachment managers and the president's defense team present arguments for and against removal, respectively will begin on Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET.

One of the biggest questions heading into the trial is whether to call witnesses. Senior GOP lawmakers like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have argued strongly against calling witnesses, claiming that they have all the information they need and that the impeachment process itself is a sham.

But cracks have emerged in the Senate GOP ranks. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, for instance, have signaled their support for calling witnesses. And Collins told Maine's Bangor Daily News earlier this month that she was working with a "fairly small group" of fellow Republican senators to ensure the upper chamber brings witnesses in to testify in Trump's impeachment trial.

CNN's latest poll found that a significant majority 69% believe the impeachment trial should feature testimony from new witnesses who did not testify in the House's impeachment inquiry. Among Republicans, 48% say they want new witnesses, while 44% say they do not.

Broad public support for calling new witnesses means Congress could hear from officials at the highest levels of the executive branch, like former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Mulvaney and Pompeo defied House subpoenas for testimony last year. Bolton did as well, but he announced this month that he is prepared to testify in the Senate trial if lawmakers subpoena him again.

Trump's actions in Ukraine first came to light in an anonymous whistleblower's complaint that a US intelligence official filed in August. The complaint detailed a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky during which the US president repeatedly pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr to investigate the Bidens, as well as a bogus conspiracy theory suggesting Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to help Democrats.

But a string of public testimony from career government officials since then revealed that the phone call was just one data point in a months-long effort to bully Ukraine into caving to Trump's demands.

The contents of the whistleblower complaint were corroborated by a White House memo summarizing the July 25 phone call. Trump himself has said several times in public that he wanted Ukraine to probe the Bidens.

Moreover, Gordon Sondland, the US's ambassador to the European Union, testified to Congress that "everyone," including senior officials like Bolton, Pompeo, Mulvaney, and more, was in the loop on what Trump was doing.

Additional reporting and documents since the House impeached Trump in December revealed that there was widespread concern across lower levels of the government, including in the State Department and the Pentagon, about the legality of the president's actions.

CNN surveyed 1,156 adults by phone between January 16-19 and the poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

NOW WATCH: A law professor weighs in on how Trump could beat impeachment

New poll on the eve of Trump's impeachment trial finds that 51% of Americans think he should be removed from office

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