This is off the MSNBC site covering the polls; where do you get their poll number so completely condradictory to all other polls and their own website?
A MAJORITY in four polls released over the weekend
- for NBC News/Wall Street Journal, ABC News, CBS
News and CNN/USA Today/Gallup - said they thought
the president should remain in office.
Still, a majority in the polls released Sunday said they
want Congress to punish the president in some form. A
narrow majority in the ABC News poll, 53 percent, said
they favor impeachment hearings, although they are divided
on whether Clinton should be impeached. A majority in the
CBS News poll, 56 percent, and in the CNN poll, 59
percent, said they favor censure by Congress.
An NBC News poll released Saturday evening,
meanwhile, found Clinton's job approval at 67 percent, up
from 64 percent in July. Taken into account that Clinton has
apologized and said he sinned, 37 percent said Congress
should drop the matter "even if laws were broken" while 60
percent said it should not and 3 percent were not sure.
In the NBC poll, 58 percent said Clinton is fit to remain
president and 36 percent not fit and 6 percent were not
sure; 66 percent said he should serve out the remainder of
his term, 31 percent said he should not and 3 percent were
not sure.
"Right now it's very much a split verdict," said NBC's
Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert and host of "Meet
the Press. "They support the president, the job he's doing,
but they want the investigation to continue."
He said the number of people who don't think the
president is fit to remain in office has edged up to a third
and the White House is watching those numbers carefully. If
the numbers reach, 50-50, he said the White House will be
more concerned that calls for the president's resignation will
ring louder.
The president's sexual relationship with former White
House intern Monica Lewinsky was outlined in detail in
Starr's report released Friday and made public in
newspapers, over the Internet and on news broadcasts.
A majority of people said they don't think Republicans
and Democrats in Congress will be able to work together in
a fair and bipartisan manner.
"This entire process is overwhelmingly political in
nature and the consensus of the citizens of this country will
be the determining factor in the way Congress responds,"
said Democratic National Committee Chairman Steve
Grossman.
The spokesman for the Republican National
Committee, Mike Collins, said Americans are just beginning
to absorb the detailed report. "But this is not about polls, as
both Democrats and Republicans have said. This is about
getting to the truth," Collins said.
NO TO IMPEACHMENT
When people were asked, with no mention of the Starr
report, whether impeachment hearings are necessary, a
majority in the CBS poll said no. And almost two-thirds in
the Gallup poll said they don't want Clinton impeached.
Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the Republican chairman of
the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Bob Kerrey, D-Neb.,
said the president was not helping himself with the American
public with his lawyers' argument that he technically had no
sexual relationship with Lewinsky.
"Nobody believes that," Hatch said on the CBS show
"Face The Nation" Sunday. "Nobody wants to hear that."
TOO MANY DETAILS
The president's aides have charged the Starr report
was intended to embarrass the president, a claim that has
support among the public.
Almost two-thirds of Americans in the CBS poll said
they think the Starr report has too many graphic sexual
details. And six out of 10 said the report was intended
mostly to embarrass the president and shouldn't have been
released to the public.
Analysts caution that such polls taken soon after an
event may not pick up some shifts in public opinion, which
can take longer to register.
The ABC phone survey of 508 adults on Saturday had
a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
The CBS phone survey of 680 adults and the CNN phone
survey of 902 adults, both on Saturday, had margins of
error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
FRIDAY'S REPORTS
A CNN/Gallup poll conducted Friday, after the
independent counsel's report appeared on the Internet, said
62 percent of the 631 adults surveyed approved of the way
Clinton was doing his job, a rise of 2 percentage points
from Thursday.
Clinton's job approval rating stood unchanged in the
latest poll by Newsweek, at 61 percent. Fifty percent of
respondents said despite the sex scandal he was still up to
the job of leading the country.
An ABC News poll of 510 adults showed that 56
percent approved of Clinton's performance in the White
House, down one point from a survey taken two days
before.
Clinton biographer David Maraniss told NBC
that people elected Clinton knowing the details of his private
life were sordid, but see a difference in the way he conducts
his public life.
According to Maraniss, a "question to raise is whether
you see that reckless behavior in other more public aspects
of his presidency. I think you could make the argument that
you don't. And therefore you could say it's private
behavior. But it certainly is a pattern that is quite familiar and
has gone on for decades."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
