More Numbers

Funny how, even though I've been a way for a bit, things haven't changed much.

Note a recent poll done by the American Research Group.

A total of 64% of American voters say that President George W. Bush has abused his powers as president. Of the 64%, 14% (9% of all voters) say the abuses are not serious enough to warrant impeachment, 33% (21% of all voters) say the abuses rise to the level of impeachable offenses, but he should not be impeached, and 53% (34% of all voters) say the abuses rise to the level of impeachable offenses and Mr. Bush should be impeached and removed from office.

Here's what ARG did. They polled 1,100 registered voters about a series of statements and asked which statement the respondent agreed with most. Here are the statements:

1. President Bush has not abused his powers as president.

2. President Bush has abused his powers as president, but the abuses are not serious enough to warrant impeachment under the Constitution.

3. President Bush has abused his powers as president which rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution, but he should not be impeached.

4. President Bush has abused his powers as president which rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution and he should be impeached and removed from office.

And here's another look at the data. For all voters, 36% agreed with the first statement, 9% agreed with the second, 21% agreed with the third, and 34% agreed with the last. They did a percentage of the percentage thing and it moves things a step or two away from the raw data (and that always gets a little dicey). But there is some interesting data there when broken down by party.

For Democrats the percentages for those same statemnts are; 16, 9, 25, 50. So half of the Democrats polled think that Bush has abused his powers in such a way that it rises to the level of impeachment.

But take a look at the percentages from our friends in the GOP. Those percentages are, 64, 6, 12, 18. So while a little under 2/3 of Republicans don't think the President has abused his powers at all, 18% think he has and should be should be impeached for it. Additionally, 12% of the Republicans polled think that while he has abused his powers enough to be impeached, he shouldn't be impeached.

So...

30% of the Republicans polled think dubya has abused the powers of his office enough to warrant impeachment (though some don't think he should be impeached).

30% - where are these people?