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An October 7th segment of Fox News and Friends is available on YouTube

McCarthy: More people want to investigate Biden than impeach Trump

House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy says at 3m19s:

More people in America want to investigate what Biden has done (and his son) than want to impeach this president.

He elaborates at 5m20s:

There's going to be a new poll that comes out that those who current agree that [they] want the President impeached, 73% of them already wanted to impeach before anything they saw [in the recent news]. The majority of Americans (63%) believe he shouldn't be impeached for anything on that phone call.

So, is this claim true? Are there any polls on how many Americans want the Bidens investigated? (I assume there are some regarding Trump's impeachment.)

Oddthinking
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Fizz
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    I found a related poll (about whether Americans think Trump asked the Bidens to be investigated) but not quite on this (whether Americans themselves want the Bidens investigated) https://www.businessinsider.com/only-40-percent-republicans-believe-trump-asked-ukraine-investigate-biden-2019-10 – Fizz Oct 08 '19 at 05:21
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    I am concerned that the question title, video title, 3m20 quote make one claim (that more believe Biden should be investigated than Trump impeached) and the more elaborated version makes a very different claim (that more people after hearing about Trump's alleged phone call had their minds changed to now believe that Biden should be investigated than had their minds changed to now believe that Trump should be impeached over the phone call). The latter claim is far more prosaic. – Oddthinking Oct 08 '19 at 14:09
  • I haven't seen this supposed 63% poll, the only polls regarding this situation around 63% are the ones where 62% of Americans think that DT acted inappropriately – DenisS Oct 08 '19 at 14:32
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    Not sure if this is a good fit for the site because the "truth" of this is difficult to determine and may be in flux. – antlersoft Oct 08 '19 at 17:24
  • (1/2) Now that I've parsed McCarthy's statement more, it's not surprising what he may be claiming. It sounds like he's claiming that if X is the percent that want Trump impeached, and Y is the percent that want Biden investigated, that X(now) - X(3 weeks ago) is less than Y(now) - Y(3 weeks ago). The problem is that X(3 weeks ago) was around 40% whereas Y(3 weeks ago) was at 0%. No one was even polling the Biden question probably until news broke that Trump was pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden, at which point his base probably all started saying Biden should be investigated. – DenisS Oct 08 '19 at 20:48
  • (2/2) If we make some basic assumptions about base sizes and say 40% disagree with Trump, 40% agree with Trump, and 20% are in the middle, it's mathematically impossible for McCarthy to be wrong. The Impeach side has only 20% of the electorate to gain in the middle because the Impeach question has been on every poll since the Mueller investigation probably. Almost no one wanted Biden investigated a month ago and because of that the number has to be 0%. The moment news broke that Trump was pressuring Ukraine and China, that number became 40%. 40% > 20%. Q.E.D. – DenisS Oct 08 '19 at 20:52
  • (3/2) Problem is that that doesn't tell us anything. We don't exist in a world where pollsters were asking questions about investigating Biden until after the Ukraine call was released by the WH. Trump has done a number of things during his presidency that could be construed as impeachable offences, and in fact a number of Democratic lawmakers have been pushing for impeachment for some time. Trump had his entire base to support a Biden investigation, whereas Democrats have only had the Independants for the most part. – DenisS Oct 08 '19 at 20:58
  • @Oddthinking: I agree the 2nd quote is less interesting but it's also not fully supporting the initial claim (even if that poll exists) since McCarty didn't advance any numbers on how many people want to investigate the Bidens (so he is numerically comparing one thing, instead of two). The reasons I brought up the 2nd quote is to convince that he is talking about polls, instead of some weird narrow reading of the first claim like only House Democrats want to impeach the president *themselves*, instead of supporting impeachment [done by others]. – Fizz Oct 08 '19 at 21:09
  • @Oddthinking: the other (funny) thing about that interview is that one of the hosts interrupts McCarty right after he makes his first claim... to tell him how awful it is to be interrupted (on other channels of course)! It takes McCarty a couple of minutes before he can resume what he wanted to talk about. At 5:10 McCarty goes "remember what we were talking about" before introducing the poll data. – Fizz Oct 08 '19 at 21:22
  • *"Do more Americans want..."* elicits a question that needs over 300 million answers. While, is *"There's going to be a new poll that comes out"* requires a single, meaningless, yes or no. – Mazura Oct 08 '19 at 22:06
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    @Mazura: Statistical sampling - e.g. via a well-run poll - is a reasonable approach to finding out the opinion of a large group without asking every member. Having an answer that quotes a poll is a reasonable way to answer. – Oddthinking Oct 09 '19 at 02:46
  • Is this what is called a "push poll" type of question? – spring Oct 09 '19 at 02:49
  • @Fizz: If we accept the (unprovable?) premise that McCarthy was trying to make a carefully couched (and potentially misleading) statement, but was interrupted, and then misquoted in the headline, what should an answer look like? – Oddthinking Oct 09 '19 at 02:49
  • @NoGrabbing: If you want to argue the poll was a push poll, you need to find details about it (or even better, reviews of it by appropriate experts). It is premature to argue that an alleged, unpublished, casually-referenced poll was carried out inappropriately. – Oddthinking Oct 09 '19 at 02:50
  • @Oddthinking: I'm *not* giving McCarty's words that "alternative" interpretation. (But see what loopholes others are looking for in this word in other comments here...) I'm happy with Dev's answer, which I didn't accept yet just in case someone produce a poll that back up McCarty, although i think it rather unlikely given the other polls. The Ipsos one (42 vs 45) does make me think that there might be a Republican-leaning pollster that might have put out something narrowly backing McCarty's claim, but insofar even that hasn't been found. So McCarty is getting some pinnochios insofar. – Fizz Oct 09 '19 at 02:58
  • @Oddthinking - I was referring to **the form of the question** being of the "push poll" type. I was not referring to any "an alleged, unpublished, casually-referenced poll". – spring Oct 09 '19 at 04:56
  • @NoGrabbing: Then the answer is no. This is not an opinion poll, so it is not a push poll. – Oddthinking Oct 09 '19 at 07:23
  • @Oddthinking - "Having an answer that quotes a poll is [the *only*] reasonable way to answer." - now it's a question of if it was a "well-run poll", if such a thing even exists. IMO, they don't, so if this question's title had the word *'poll'* in it (or *Fox News*, for that matter), I'd've completely ignored it. – Mazura Oct 09 '19 at 23:16
  • @Mazura: Okay, I understand you won't accept polling as evidence. But you must understand that is a position of a tiny minority and hence most questions related to polls are not so marked. – Oddthinking Oct 10 '19 at 02:12

2 Answers2

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Are we talking representative polls by reputable pollsters, or "online polls"? Is being in favor of an impeachment inquiry the same as "wanting Trump impeached"? Lots of wriggle room there.

How many Americans want the Bidens investigated?

CBS News sees 43% "in favor of further investigation", 29% saying "too soon to say". As per the same article, 55% approve of the impeachment inquiry.

USA Today / Ipsos has 42% "seeing valid reasons to look at the behavior of Joe and Hunter Biden in Ukraine" (52% agreeing that "President Trump asking Ukraine to investigate Biden is an abuse of power"), while 45% say "the U.S. House should vote to impeach" (up from 32% in June).

DevSolar
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    Obviously we should look at the most reputable polls. Otherwise almost [any claim can be "validated"](https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/10/02/donald-trump-impeach-this-map/)... – Fizz Oct 08 '19 at 08:02
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    @Fizz: The Ipsos poll comes with information on the methods used (in the updated link). Whether that agrees with your demands for a reputable poll is up to you (and beyond my paygrade ;-) ). I'd expect McCarthy to at least *mention* the source for his assertion, though, because what I *did* find doesn't back him up. -- That being said, neither a Biden investigation nor an impeachment inquiry is a matter of *public* vote. – DevSolar Oct 08 '19 at 08:07
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    I found [this MorningConsult poll](https://morningconsult.com/2019/10/02/trumps-biden-ukraine-narrative-isnt-moving-democratic-voters/) in the meantime. It's only among Democrats, but there allegations against Biden don't seem to make a difference in voting intention the primaries. But it's not asking about whether they think an investigation (of the Bidens) should happen. Combined with what you've posted it seems there's almost total polarization on this, i.e. Republicans believe mostly Trump (and his story) and vice-versa for Democrats. – Fizz Oct 08 '19 at 08:15
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    @Fizz : by "reputable" most people mean sources from the same political side they identify with... – vsz Oct 09 '19 at 04:13
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    @vsz: Actually there are [reasonable ways](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/) to rank pollsters that don't involve that level of subjectivity. Although such rankings sometimes do expose consistent bias by a given pollster. – Fizz Oct 09 '19 at 04:32
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    @vsz: I'd like to think that by "reputable" most people mean sources that are not from any political side – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Oct 09 '19 at 19:18
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Possibily

The nature of this claim is very temporal; so I've limited it to polls in near proximity to Oct 7.

Note that there are multiple levels of opinion about actions taken:

  1. The accused is possibly guilty, and there should be investigation.

  2. The accused is probably guilty.

  3. The accused is guilty.

For context, I've shown each opinion for each person.

|-----------------|----------------|-----------------|-------------------|
|                 |  Investigation | Probable guilt  | Impeachment/Guilt | 
|-----------------|----------------|-----------------|-------------------|
|                 |    55% (CBS)   |                 |    42% (CBS)      |
|                 |    55% (IBD)   |                 |    50% (IBD)      |
|       Trump     | 49% (Monmouth) |    58% (Pew)    |    45% (USA)      |
|                 |    55% (WSJ)   |                 |    24% (WSJ)      |
|                 |    54% (Pew)   |                 |                   |
|-----------------|----------------|-----------------|-------------------|
|                 |    43% (CBS)   |                 |                   |
|      Biden      |    57% (IBD)   |  42% (Monmouth) |                   |
|                 |    42% (USA)   |                 |                   |
|-----------------|----------------|-----------------|-------------------|

McCarthy's primary claim was that more people wanted to investigate Biden (lower-left) than impeach Trump (upper-right).

Comparing those produces a mixed result. If you choose the IBD/TIPP poll, then the answer is "yes": 57% to 50%. Other results are within margins of error.

As for the secondary claims:

those who current agree that [they] want the President impeached, 73% of them already wanted to impeach before anything they saw [in the recent news]. The majority of Americans (63%) believe he shouldn't be impeached for anything on that phone call.

I can't find support for the first number. According to Pew, 93% of people favoring an impeachment inquiry in October had also favored impeachment proceedings in September.

The second number is supported, assuming the "insufficient evidence as yet" crowd is counted in that number.

Paul Draper
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