Sixty percent of battleground voters view Democrats’ latest effort to impeach President Donald Trump as another “waste of time and money” and are seeking an orderly transition of power, a leaked internal memo shows.
These key voters were also found to fear Big Tech censorship, in the wake of the apparently coordinated effort to excommunicate Trump from their platforms and eliminate conservative competitors like Parler.
The Washington Examiner reported on the memo from pollster John McLaughlin’s to top Trump aide Jason Miller:
“ … battleground voters are more eager for the nation to move on rather than impeach the president for last week’s violent protest by pro-Trump supporters in the U.S. Capitol.
And if Congress doesn’t move on, adds the two-page memo shown below in full, those who push for impeachment may face a voter backlash in the 2022 midterm elections.”
“Voters strongly prefer that Congress deal with fighting coronavirus and not impeachment,” McLaughlin wrote. “Impeachment is viewed as a waste of time and money. Voters believe that the Democrats are playing politics and that continuing to attack the president is making it worse.”
McLaughlin found that about 89% of battleground voters want an orderly transition from Trump to President-elect Joe Biden, with 70% calling that “very important,” the Examiner highlighted.
Voters from key states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin — were found to be firmly against impeachment.
Voters were found to be “less likely to vote for a member of Congress who votes to impeach,” with a mere 36% more likely to vote for such representatives.
The Examiner outlined the key finders on impeachment as follows:
- Sixty percent of all voters said it is “another waste of time and money.”
- Twenty-three percent prefer impeaching President Trump.
- Seventy-seven percent said Congress should work on the coronavirus response instead.
- Seventy-four percent said impeachment is “politically motivated to prevent the president from running again.”
- Sixty-five percent said Biden and Pelosi are “keeping the country divided.”
When it came to Big Tech platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, voters were overwhelmingly against speech crackdowns.
The memo outlined: “74% agree that if Twitter, Facebook, and Google can censor and take away the President’s right to free speech they can take away the right to free speech for any American. Only 26% disagree.”
Moreover, “70% of all voters agree that Big Tech companies like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple have too much power and need to be regulated to protect the freedoms and privacy of Americans. Only 30% disagree.”
Trump’s job approval with battleground voters was 49% — far higher than that of Congress, at 72% disapproval.
McLaughlin & Associates outlined their methodology for the polling as follows:
McLaughlin & Associates conducted this survey among 800 voters in the recent campaign’s 17 battleground states on January 10 and 11, 2021. All interviews were conducted online among adults who identified as registered voters who voted in the November 2020 election. The interview distribution was structured to correlate with the electoral college vote by state (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin). The survey sample reflects the demographics of the November 2020 election. The accuracy of the 800-voter sample is +/-3.4% at a 95% confidence interval.