A majority of voters, including roughly 3 in 10 Republicans, don’t believe President Joe Biden should be impeached, according to a recent poll that queried Americans in the days after Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry last month.
House Republicans have begun the first steps of the impeachment process, holding their first hearing last week. At question is the president’s knowledge and involvement in his family’s business dealings, particularly those of his son Hunter.
Only 34% of registered voters said Biden should be impeached, with 16% saying he “may have violated his oath of office but should not be impeached” and 43% saying he has not violated his oath. Among Republicans, 69% were in favor of impeachment, but a combined 28% said he should not be and 4% said they were unsure. Independent voters opposed impeachment at a 53% clip, with 36% supporting and 11% unsure.
Just 15% of respondents said they trusted Congress “a lot” to conduct fair investigations into the president, including just 29% of Republicans and 14% of independents. Roughly half of independents and three in 10 Republicans said they don’t trust Congress “at all” to be fair.
The trials and tribulations of Hunter Biden, who plead not guilty to federal gun charges on Tuesday and faces congressional investigations into his business dealings over the last decade, appear unlikely to harm his father broadly at this point in the 2024 presidential cycle. Just 27% of voters said the situation would make them less likely to vote for the president in his reelection bid, with 72% of all voters and 70% of independents telling pollsters it would have “no impact” on their decision.
“The actual impact of the Hunter Biden story may be small in statistical terms but one or two percentage points could be crucial in competitive states,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a statement on Tuesday.
As for Joe Biden’s likely 2024 opponent, former President Donald Trump, just under half of voters believe the Republican frontrunner committed a crime as he worked to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss. Nearly 3 in 10 voters believe he did nothing wrong, while 22% of all voters and 30% of Republicans believe he “did something wrong but not criminal.”
Trump faces four criminal cases in four jurisdictions, including two prosecutions – a federal trial in Washington, D.C., and a state-level racketeering case in Georgia – connected to his actions after the November 2020 election and around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Joe Biden has not been charged with a crime for actions connected to his son or otherwise. And while House Republicans have leveled a number of unfounded allegations, no definitive or substantial evidence of wrongdoing has been made public.
A separate poll from NBC News last month found 56% of registered voters didn’t think Congress should hold impeachment hearings, with 39% in support of the move. Six in 10 independents opposed impeachment hearings.
“Days after MAGA Republicans’ disastrous “impeachment hearing,” new reviews from the American people are in — new polling from Monmouth University shows the American people have LITTLE to NO TRUST in MAGA Republicans’ wild goose chase to attack President Biden and his family,” wrote Ammar Moussa, the Biden campaign’s director of rapid response, in an email. “MAGA Republicans don’t have a positive agenda to help working families, so they resort to the same debunked conspiracy theories in their bid to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.”