Majority of Americans want Obama back as President: poll

Team Udayavani, Feb 3, 2017, 3:27 PM IST

Washington DC(USA) : Less than two weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency, a majority of Americans want Barack Obama back as President with a significant percentage of voters already thinking that the real estate tycoon-turned-politician should be removed from office, according to a new poll.

It has not taken long for voters to miss the good old days of Obama with 52 per cent saying they would rather have him as President, to only 43 per cent who are glad Trump is at the helm, according to a survey by Public Policy Polling.

“Usually a newly elected President is at the peak of their popularity and enjoying their honeymoon period after taking office,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling.

“But Donald Trump’s making history once again with a sizeable share of voters already wanting to impeach him, and a majority of voters wishing they could have Barack Obama back,” he said.

40 per cent of voters already want to impeach Trump. That is up from 35 per cent of voters who wanted to impeach him a week ago, the survey.

Only 48 per cent of voters say that they would be opposed to Trump’s impeachment, the poll said. “Overall voters are pretty evenly split on Trump’s executive order on immigration from last week, with 47 per cent supporting it to 49 per cent who are opposed,” the survey said.

“But when you get beyond the overall package, the pieces of the executive order become more clearly unpopular. 52 per cent of voters think that the order was intended to be a Muslim ban, to only 41 per cent who don’t think that was the intent. And the idea of a Muslim ban is extremely unpopular with the American people — only 26 per cent are in favour of it, to 65 per cent who are against it,” it said.

When it comes to barring people from certain countries from entering the US, even when those people have already secured a visa, just 39 per cent of voters are supportive to 53 per cent who are against, according to the poll.

Just 43 per cent of voters support the US indefinitely suspending accepting Syrian refugees, with 48 per cent opposed to that.

Finally voters see a basic competence issue with Trump’s handling of the executive order with only 39 per cent of voters think it was well executed, to 55 per cent who believe it was poorly executed, the survey said.

“Americans think last week’s executive order is a Muslim ban and they don’t like it,” Debnam said.

“And beyond that, they think the order was executed in an incompetent fashion,” he said.

The figures were compiled after Public Policy Polling surveyed 725 registered voters on January 30 and 31.