NJ pollster asks nation: Should Senate allow evidence? Remove Trump?

A new Monmouth University poll finds a majority of Americans support allowing new evidence at the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

Monmouth Founding Poll Director Patrick Murray says "57% say the House managers should be able to present new evidence in the
Senate trial to support the articles [of impeachment]."

He says 37% in the poll believe trial managers should be limited to whatever evidence turned up in the initial public inquiry.

Pollsters also asked about having Trump administration officials testify, including the president himself: "51% say that they should actually be compelled to testify at the Senate trial. Another 29% say they should be invited to testify "

There's a big split here: 87% of Democrats support new evidence but only 24% of Republicans want to do that.

The House's decision to impeach has support from 53% in the poll.

But according to Murray, "that support number drops a little bit when we move to the next step and say, what should the Senate do? We find 49% say that the Senate should vote to remove Trump from office. That's almost identical to the 48% who say they shouldn't do this. So there is a slight majority who say yes."

Murray says another issue the Monmouth University pollsters have been tracking since the news broke about the call between Trump and the president of Ukraine is whether the Trump administration was putting pressure on Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

"We find right now that a majority of 52% say that the administration did do this in return for that investigation," he said. "Just 34% said that they did not."

Joe Cutter is the senior news anchor on New Jersey 101.5