WASHINGTON — When it comes to impeaching Donald Trump, Americans seem to be just as divided as the United States Senate, a new poll suggests.
The online Léger poll, conducted last month for the Association for Canadian Studies, found 49 per cent of U.S. respondents supported impeachment.
Forty per cent said they opposed it, while 11 per cent said they didn't know.
A similar split exists in the Senate, where the former president's trial on a single article of inciting an insurrection was scheduled to get underway Tuesday.
Not only is Trump the first president to be impeached twice, he is also the first to face an impeachment trial in the Senate after having left office.
Democrats, for their part, promised new revelations about the events of Jan. 6, the day an angry mob of Trump supporters ran amok on Capitol Hill — a mob they argue was egged on by the president.
"The evidence will be powerful. The evidence, some of it, will be new. And I urge all my colleagues to pay careful attention to the evidence," said majority leader Sen. Chuck Schumer.
"I particularly urge my Republican colleagues, despite the pressure on them, to pay very real attention to the evidence here because it's very, very serious. Every senator, Democrat and Republican, has to approach this trial with the gravity it deserves."
That evidence likely won't be heard before Wednesday, with the trial's opening four hours of debate to be dominated by the Trump team's argument that the trial shouldn't be happening at all.
The proceeding itself, a first in U.S. history, is illegitimate because the constitution doesn't expressly allow for the impeachment of a former president, they argue.
They are wrong, Democrats insist — an opinion shared by prominent conservative lawyer Chuck Cooper in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Conviction in the Senate would be followed by a second vote on whether to prohibit Trump from seeking the presidency again — a constitutional wrinkle that applies only to "former officers," thereby undermining Trump's own defence strategy, Cooper wrote.
Republicans have also tried to argue that at a time of such division, political rancour and social tension in the U.S., an impeachment trial would do more harm than good.
"When you have such a serious charge, sweeping it under the rug will not bring unity," Schumer said. "You need truth and accountability."
Few in Washington are expecting a conviction, which would need two-thirds of the 100 senators to vote in favour.
Trump was impeached Jan. 13, days after an angry mob of his supporters laid siege to Capitol Hill while lawmakers were certifying President Joe Biden's election win.
Of the U.S. respondents to the poll, 54 per cent said they would like to see Trump banned from a 2024 run, while 39 per cent said he should be allowed to seek the job again.
The Léger poll also asked Canadians a separate set of questions that suggest they're ready to turn the page on the Trump era.
Some 61 per cent of the poll's 1,559 Canadian respondents said they expect Canada-U. S. relations to improve under Biden, compared with 15 per cent who anticipate more tension.
Another 13 per cent said they expect no change and 11 per cent didn't know.
The poll was conducted during the final week of January, which was after Biden signed an executive order on his first day in the White House cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline expansion.
Of those respondents who anticipated worsening relations, 38 per cent were in Alberta and 25 per cent in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Meanwhile, only 43 per cent of U.S. respondents who were asked the same question expected relations to improve, compared to 28 per cent who said they expect a downturn.
Online polls cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 9, 2021.
James McCarten, The Canadian Press
