Donald Trump Should Have Been Convicted, Evidence Was Strong: Poll

Fifty-eight percent of Americans believe Donald Trump should have been convicted by the Senate in his second impeachment trial, according to a new poll conducted afterward.

The ABC News/Ipsos survey conducted February 13-14 also found that 77 percent of respondents believe the senators voted based on partisan politics, while just 23 percent said they felt they voted based on the facts before them.

There was a clear partisan split in the results. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats agreed that Trump should have been convicted compared to just 14 percent of Republicans. Of independents, 64 percent also said the Senate should have convicted Trump.

Additionally, 56 percent rated the evidence against Trump in the Senate trial as strong, compared to 37 percent who called it weak. The poll used a random national sample of 547 adults and has a 4.8 percentage points margin of sampling error.

Last year, after Trump was acquitted in his first Senate impeachment trial, 49 percent of Americans said they approved of the Senate's judgment versus 47 percent who disapproved, according to a Monmouth University poll.

The Senate vote at the second impeachment was split 57-43 after seven Republicans joined with the Democrats to form a majority in favor of conviction. But it was still 10 short of the supermajority needed to achieve a conviction.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who voted to acquit saying he felt it unconstitutional to impeach a president no longer in office, attacked Trump for his "disgraceful dereliction of duty."

"There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day," he said in a speech to the Senate shortly after the vote. "No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president."

On the question of whether Trump's conduct warranted his second impeachment, the first for any U.S. President, 61 percent of respondents in the ABC/Ipsos poll agreed, with a stark difference in responses along party lines.

Only 8 percent of Democrats said they believed the trial should not have happened based on the single charge against the former president compared to 83 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of independents.

It was only on the question of whether politicians voted in line with party interests on which respondents were largely in unison—76 percent of Democrats, 78 percent of Republicans, and 79 percent of independents concurred.

Despite his Senate acquittal, Trump still faces the possibility of criminal charges for his part in inciting the January 6 storming of the Capital Building, something McConnell also addressed in his speech.

"We have a criminal justice system in this country," he said. "We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one."