Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support Impeaching Bush...

Released: December 21, 2005

Nation Split Over Bush Communication Intercept; Presidential Job Approval Improves To 44%, Up 6% In Latest poll, New Zogby Interactive Poll Shows

UTICA, New York - A narrow plurality of likely voters nationwide believe President Bush acted within his Constitutional powers when he authorized the interception of international communications without the approval of a federal judge, but the public is closely divided on the issue, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.

Nearly half - 49% - said they think he has the power to authorize the intercepts, while 45% said he does not, the survey showed.

The interactive survey of 1,929 likely voters nationwide, conducted Dec. 20-21, carries a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

Asked if the President's actions made Americans more safe or less safe, 50% said the nation was safer because of his actions, while 18% said the actions put the country more at risk and 26% said it made no difference in our level of safety.

However, 44% said they were concerned that the communication intercepts were a step toward stripping Americans of their privacy. Another 23% said they believe the secret intercepts are important in rare cases to fight terrorism, and 29% said they were necessary to combat enemies.

The New York Times reported last week that Mr. Bush had authorized the intercepts, and the White House has since mounted an aggressive campaign to explain their actions. Democrats on Capitol Hill are calling for hearings into the matter.

The controversy, just days old, has not harmed the President, whose job approval rating has improved from a low of 38% earlier this month to 44% now - this as the nation has seen robust economic growth and the Iraq parliamentary elections last week were conducted with little violence and high voter turnout.

Asked whether they felt the nation was on the right track, 44% agreed, while 51% said the country was headed in the wrong direction, the poll shows.

A slight majority - 51% - said they now either strongly or somewhat support the war in Iraq, while 49% said they did not. In the wake of the elections there last week, 51% agreed that the war has been worth it. A Zogby International telephone poll taken the first week of December showed 49% believed the war was worth it.

(12/21/2005)

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of 1,003 adults found that 50 percent of those polled believe it's OK to forgo warrants when ordering electronic surveillance of people suspected of having ties to terrorists abroad.

Tico first poll is from December 21st, the second poll is split 50'50 factoring in the margin of error.

Neither poll asked the impeachment question. Is Tico seriously doubting that Zogby conducted the poll. If so, that is just typical right-wing extremist denial.

The fact that the poll is not on the Zogby site is irrelevant and a red herring.

Nice try though.

Despite peoples' beliefs to the contrary, i don't choke on the words necessary to agree with someone who commonly expresses political opinions which i consider ludicrous.

Tico, go to the Zogby site and scroll down the right hand column--those with the orange headers (at least in my browser). It's cited there, dated 1/2/06, and it does indeed report a majority of Americans.

uh, gee, try zogby.com (right hand side, headed ImpeachPac, dated 1/2/06--the guy quoted is an ImpeachPac guy, and this is circumstantial, to be sure, but I have my doubts that it's gonna be on the Zogby site, with the Zogby header, and without further comment, if it's not the results of their poll).

ImpeachPAC Forms Citizens Impeachment Commission

ImpeachPAC today announced the formation of a Citizens Impeachment Commission to make 2006 the "Year of Impeachment."

"We are honored by the broad support for impeachment from this distinguished group of true American patriots," said Bob Fertik, President of ImpeachPAC. "Impeachment is not a 'fringe' position, as the Bush Administration would like Americans to believe. With a recent Zogby poll showing Americans support impeachment hearings by a solid majority of 53%-42%, there is far more support for impeachment than there is for the War in Iraq," Fertik said.

"Despite three rounds of Iraqi elections, 845 brave young Americans died in Iraq in 2005, only 3 fewer than the 848 lost in 2004. Also 30,000 to 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed in the wake of the U.S. invasion. George Bush and Dick Cheney are personally responsible for each of those deaths, because they deliberately lied to Congress and the American people to start this disastrous and never-ending war," Fertik added.

ImpeachPAC is a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates for Congress who support the immediate and simultaneous impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney for their Iraq War lies. In less than two months, ImpeachPAC has raised nearly $50,000 and endorsed its first candidate, Tony Trupiano of Michigan.

ImpeachPAC's efforts have forced the Washington establishment to admit that the many misdeeds of the Bush administration - including the latest revelation of warantless wiretapping of American citizens - are valid grounds for impeachment. The question now facing Washington is not whether Bush and Cheney committed impeachable crimes, but whether Democrats and Republicans in Congress will fulfill their solemn Constitutional duty to investigate and prosecute those crimes, as proposed in December by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) in H.Res.635.

The goals of the Citizens Impeachment Commission are:

* To put impeachment firmly "on the map" of national politics by demonstrating broad and significant support for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney for lying about Iraq.
* To lobby Members of Congress to introduce Articles of Impeachment immediately.
* To campaign for pro-impeachment candidates and elect a pro-impeachment majority to Congress in November.

(1/2/2006)
- by David Swanson , OpEdNews.com - Common Dreams - Political Affairs Magazine

Footnotes:



2. The Ipsos Public Affairs poll and the new Zogby poll results cited above refer to surveys of U.S. adults. The June 2005 Zogby results are from a survey of likely voters. The new Zogby poll produced results for both adults and likely voters:
1/06 Zogby: Adults and Likely Voters
11/05 Zogby: Adults and Likely Voters.
10/05 Ipsos: Adults and definitions of regions.
6/05 Zogby: Likely Voters.

3. The original impeachment question was written by Zogby for their own poll in June 2005. (We tried to persuade them to repeat their question in their regular polls, but they refused - so we had to pay them to do it.) Subsequent questions, including this one, were written jointly by AfterDowningStreet.org and the pollsters. Obviously there are many ways to word polling questions, and wording has an effect on the results. (Joseph Cannon takes issue with the IF-THEN formulation.) The range of possible questions can be seen in the 1998 polls on impeaching President Clinton. That is why, in July 2005, we began asking the Corporate Media pollsters to conduct their own polls, using their own wording. We also support the efforts of MyDD's Chris Bowers to conduct an in-depth poll on impeachment, which should be completed soon. Personally, I think it's a waste of time to quibble over individual words in a poll for any number of reasons. The most important conclusions to draw from our poll are:

44. If President Bush wire tapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable
through impeachment?