October 29-31 Survey Analysis by Mark Penn

President Trump’s approval month over month remains stable at 46%. Despite all the happenings around Ukraine and impeachment, our data suggests that Trump is being buoyed by his approval on the economy and fighting terrorism. Trumps economic approval is 57% and his approval in terms of handling terrorism is up 5 points month over month and after the special forces raid that killed ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi.

Joe Biden is still on top of the Democratic horserace, with 33% of the vote among Democrats. He is followed by Sanders at 18% and Warren at 15%. However, there are three important data points to keep in mind: (1) 60% of voters say they might still change their mind; (2) aside from Biden, majorities of voters think the other leading Democratic contenders are too far to the left; and (3) 60% of voters say they want to vote for a centrist candidate rather than someone more to the right of the left. If Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, or Mike Bloomberg jump in the race Hillary would be effectively tied with Biden among Democrats -- Biden 19%, Hillary 18%. Bloomberg would start at 6%.

General impeachment sentiment on President Trump is at 45% impeach, 15% Censure by Congress, and 40% take no action.

We then ran an in depth battery of question Ukraine, and found:

74% of voters say they are paying close attention to the Trump-Ukraine story

A slight majority thinks that asking the Ukrainian leader to investigate the Bidens fits the threshold for impeaching a president (54%)

Voters are split on whether asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens is tantamount to inviting a foreign power to interfere in US elections (48% “no” / 52% “yes”). Voters generally think that the impeachment investigation is fair (54%) and the Congressional inquiry is legitimate (57%), but they also strongly believe the impeachment proceeding should be public (81%) and that the president’s lawyers should be permitted to question witnesses (79%)

Lastly, voters are not thrilled with Hunter Biden benefiting from his father’s office, but a majority (58%) attribute it to bad judgement and another 27% think his actions were illegal

Our survey gave reasons for and against impeachment, and after hearing the arguments on both sides impeachment sentiment drops by 4 points to 41% for Trump. The best reason in support of Trump is that voters see it as legitimate for the President to ask for corruption investigations. The best argument against Trump is that NSC and CIA officials were concerned about the communications.

On other topics, a majority of voters (54% and up, among various questions) support the pull out of US troops from Syria. And voters slightly favor that social media companies should follow the first amendment 53% to 47%.

As always, I invite you to send me questions and engage in a conversation on the findings. I’d also like to thank my collaborators, and the Harvard Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) and the Harris Poll for their continued work on this poll. Follow my podcast on the poll on SoundCloud (full episode) or any of the following channels: @iHeartRadio, @ApplePodcasts, @Spotify, @Stitcher,@Google, @SoundCloud, @RadioPublic, @Tunein, @Castbox_fm, @Overcast, @Castro. The link to the full poll is here.

Each month, Presidential Pollster Mark Penn shares findings from the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, which is released by the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard and The Harris Poll. From October 29-31, we interviewed 1,810 registered voters to compile data for the latest poll. To sign up for regular updates and to learn more about poll results and coverage, visit harvardharrispoll.com and follow @Mark_Penn_Polls on Twitter.