"In the wake of combative impeachment hearings, those surveyed oppose by 51%-45% a Senate vote to convict Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress."

"Though those results may be sobering – almost half of Americans support removing the president from office – they are a bit better for him than the survey's findings in October, when Americans split 47%-46%. The findings underscore how durable Trump's support has been even in the face of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that he used military aid and a coveted Oval Office meeting to pressure the president of Ukraine to announce investigations into one of Trump's political rivals."

That's USAToday reporting its new poll — under the headline "Narrow majority opposes removing Trump from office if he is impeached."

It's a "narrow" majority because 51% is only one percentage point above 50%, but it's 6 percentage points above the 45% who support removing Trump. And it's 4 percentage points more than opposition to removal the same survey found back before all the public hearings.

And I'm laughing at the idea that Trump's support is "durable... even in the face of" all that testimony. First off, it didn't just endure. It grew. A lot. And I don't see how the USA Today has a basis for characterizing the growth as something that happened "in the face of" the testimony. It seems just as rational to speculate that it grew because of the testimony. The hearings made impeachment seem like a partisan overreach. Or the hearings made the idea of removing the President seem more real and made people think something like, no, that's not how we behave in the United States. Before that reality set in, perhaps, people were more willing to say yes to removal because it seemed like a way express strong disapproval of the President.

I'm just guessing, of course, but my point is only that the USA Today should work harder on journalistic professionalism. I know it may sound silly. A pipe dream. But I like to say it anyway.

ADDED: Meade read this post and made a point that I've never heard anyone make and I think is really important and profound. The Constitution requires a supermajority of the Senators — two thirds — in order to remove the President and that expresses the principle that removing the President  is something extraordinary. That principle should be applied to the polls. We should look for much more than a mere majority in support of removing the President. Even if the "narrow majority" this poll found were in favor of removal, it should not be enough. To justify the extraordinary action of removal, the polls should show that more than 66% of Americans want it.

AND: What were the polls on Nixon? At the point when Nixon resigned, Pew Research showed that 57% of American adults supported removal. The trend in the poll numbers was sharply upward, up from 37% in less than 6 months.