Overwhelming opposition to Capitol attacks, majority support for preventing Trump from serving again, poll finds

WASHINGTON — The vast majority of Americans say they oppose the actions of the rioters who stormed and ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, while smaller majorities say President Donald Trump bears responsibility for the attack and that he should be removed from office and disqualified from serving again, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Even as the findings are sharply partisan, over half of Americans — and 1 in 8 Republicans — say Trump should be criminally charged for his role in the attacks.

The president also comes in for broad criticism over his repeated and baseless assertions that the November election was rigged and tainted by widespread fraud. By a margin of more than 2 to 1, Americans say the president has acted irresponsibly in his statements and actions since the election.

The survey underscores that Trump will leave office next week on a sour note in the eyes of a majority of the country, with his approval rating tumbling to near the lowest points of his presidency. The findings mean that as he concludes his single term in office, Trump is judged worse than other recent past presidents when they left office.

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Nonetheless, the president continues to enjoy strong support from Republicans, among whom a clear majority agree with his false claims about what happened in November, oppose his removal from office and believe Republican elected officials should continue to follow his lead in the future.

The divide between Americans reflects views of Trump that have remained sharply partisan since his 2016 election.

Carolyn Adams, a Democrat and fitness center manager from Columbia, S.C., condemned how Trump, in his speech immediately before the Capitol riot, “was trying to activate his people to come out.”

“I think it was just crazy,” said Adams, a Biden supporter. “Brainwashed by Trump to do that. They acted like zombies, and it was very irresponsible. So many accomplished people were there: military, police, lawyers, and people in jobs they worked for years and lost it in minutes due to foolishness.”

In follow-up interviews, some Trump supporters falsely claimed rioters were infiltrated by radical liberals and minimized the violence caused by Trump supporters.

“The protesters that stormed the Capitol didn’t represent anything, and they were such a small handful of people,” said William Palma, a retired New York City transit worker and Trump supporter. “Their objective was to make the real Trump supporters look bad. The majority wasn’t Trump supporters; a few of them may have been.”

Glenn Smith, a Trump supporter from Tennessee, said the rioters “weren’t aggressive.”

“They stood outside the doors and chanted and raised their flags,” Smith said. “A young woman was shot and killed — if she had a weapon, that was her ignorance. It’s a whole lot more peaceful than Black Lives Matter.”

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Overall, almost 9 in 10 Americans oppose the storming of the Capitol, including 8 in 10 who say they strongly oppose the events that shook the country, which resulted in the deaths of one police officer and four rioters and left dozens injured. On this question, 98% of Democrats, 80% of Republicans, 89% of independents, 87% of White Americans, 94% of Black Americans and 93% of Hispanic Americans agree in their opposition to the violent insurrection.

The events of the week of the attacks have resulted in people saying they are less confident in the stability of democracy in the United States, with 51% saying that is now their view, compared with 13% who say it has left them more confident and 32% saying the attacks and related events have made no difference in their assessment.

Most Americans say Trump deserves significant responsibility for the attack on the Capitol: 45% say he bears “a great deal” of responsibility, another 12% say he bears a “good amount” of responsibility. Another 14% say Trump deserves “just some” responsibility for the attack, while 28% say he bears none at all.

In a related question, 54% say he should be charged with the crime of inciting a riot. But the bipartisan agreement that was shown in condemnations of the attack on the Capitol disappears on these questions, with Democrats and Republicans sharply at odds.

Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say Trump bears responsibility for the attacks, and a similar share say he should be charged with a crime, while just 2 in 10 Republicans fix blame on Trump for what happened and more than 8 in 10 say he should not be prosecuted.

Bridget Kamas, a Republican and stay-at-home mother from Hugo, Minn., said all of those who commit crimes need to be brought to justice.

“Any protesters or looters need to be brought to justice. Every single one of them on both sides of the aisle,” Kamas said. But, she added, “Where the line was crossed was going inside, and that was wrong and Trump should have spoken sooner to stop it. I don’t think he said ‘Go inside, open the doors, go into the Capitol.’ ”

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Yet John Black, a Democrat and retiree from Arizona, said he was struck by the scene of “the president of the United States outside the White House asking people to march on the Capitol, to disrupt what the U.S. Congress was doing.”

Black said it was “kind of frightening that people would feel a sense of anger that would prompt them to do something like that.”

On Wednesday, the House voted to impeach Trump on a single article of inciting insurrection. Ten Republicans joined 222 Democrats in support of the resolution, while 197 Republicans voted against it. With that vote, Trump became the first president to be impeached twice.

The Senate soon will take up the impeachment issue, and the trial probably will take place after Trump is out of office. The survey, which was conducted before it was clear when the Senate trial would begin, finds that 56 % of Americans favor removing him from office and disqualifying him from ever holding office in the future. That contrasts with the 47 % who supported his impeachment and removal from office in the first impeachment trial a year ago.

Democrats and Democratic leaners favor removal and disqualification by 89% to 9%, while Republicans oppose it by 85% to 12%. Among those who do not lean toward either party, 56% support removal from office and a ban on a future run. A majority of women (62%) support removal and disqualification from future office, while men are split, with 49% in favor and 48% in opposition.

Trump’s postelection efforts to reverse the election results, which has included repeated baseless claims of widespread fraud, a campaign to pressure Georgia state officials to “find” the votes to change the results there and his attempt to force Vice President Pence to intervene with the final ratification of the electoral vote count in Congress, are widely criticized.

By 66% to 30%, Americans say Trump acted irresponsibly in the postelection period and by similar margins say there is no solid evidence for his claims of widespread voter fraud.

Most Republicans and Republican leaners, however, side with Trump on these questions: 65% say Trump acted responsibly after the election, and 66% say there is solid evidence of widespread fraud. Amid flutterings of debate over what the GOP path forward should be, their desire is clear: Nearly 6 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say party leaders should follow Trump’s lead in the future, rather than moving in a different direction.

A slight majority of Americans (52%) say Republican leaders went too far in supporting Trump in his baseless claims about the legitimacy of the election, but 48% of Republicans say those leaders did not go far enough in backing the president’s efforts.

Nonetheless, a sizable minority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents — about a quarter — reject Trump’s claims of voter fraud since the election, and 35 % say party leaders should move away from Trump in the future, a sentiment that has roughly doubled from 18% in 2018. These views are more common among Republicans who are moderate or liberal, those who have four-year college degrees and those who are not White evangelical Christians.

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More than 6 in 10 U.S. adults say they are confident in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system, compared with more than 1 in 3 who say they are not confident, including more than 6 in 10 Republicans.

Looking forward, Americans are of mixed minds about their level of optimism about the overall system of government, with 30% generally optimistic, 20% generally pessimistic and 48% uncertain. Democrats are about twice as optimistic as Republicans.

Overall, 38% of Americans say they approve of Trump’s handling of the presidency. That is the lowest measurement for him since fall 2019 in Post-ABC polling. The 60% who disapprove is the highest since summer 2018, as is the fact that 52% of Americans say they “strongly”disapprove of his job performance.

Democrats are nearly unanimous (95%) in disapproving of his performance, while 79% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents approve of him. That marks something of a drop for Trump in his party, as it is slightly lower than 85% in October and 86 % in September.

Nearly 6 in 10 Americans say Trump will be judged by history as a below-average president. Going back to 1993, only George W. Bush was judged as harshly when he left office in 2009.

But the opposition to Trump is more emphatic than it was for Bush: Nearly half of all Americans (48%) say Trump will go down in history as a poor president vs. 36% who gave Bush the worst possible rating.

Barack Obama and Bill Clinton received net positive evaluations as they left the White House, while George H.W. Bush received more positive than negative marks, though 51% said they saw him as being judged as just average.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted by telephone from Jan. 10-13, 2021, among a random national sample of 1,002 adults with 75% reached on cellphone and 25% on landline. Results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, and is larger for results among subgroups.