In a poll released Tuesday by Monmouth University, just four in 10 self-identified Republicans said they believe that President Donald Trump discussed political rival former Vice President Joe Biden during his phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25.
The 40 percent of Republicans compares to 85 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of independents surveyed who said that Trump "probably did" mention the idea of investigating the Biden family.
"At the very least, it is clear from the readout that Trump discussed investigating Biden during the call. Even though this information was released by the White House itself, more than one quarter of Republicans still say Trump probably didn't make any mention of it," the press release quoted Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute as saying.
The poll was conducted by telephone, surveying 1,161 adults across the United States. The Monmouth University Polling Institute has stated that the results have a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points. The calls took place on September 23-29, as the Ukraine whistleblower story developed and the impeachment inquiry began. Monmouth University's press release announcing the poll results did not report day-by-day responses during the week-long window, which means that some people may have answered the survey prior to the release of the transcript, while others may have answered afterwards.
Three days before the White House released the transcript, Trump said openly that he discussed the investigation of the Biden family with Zelensky. Trump has continued to claim that there was nothing wrong with the conversation.
"There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great," said Trump told Zelensky during the call.
According to the Monmouth University poll, overall, more than six out of ten adults said that it was wrong for a U.S. president to make the type of request to a foreign leader Trump did, but only three out of ten Republicans agreed with that statement.
The survey also found that almost half—49 percent—of adults thought that it was a good idea for the House Judiciary Committee to move forward with the impeachment inquiry, compared to 44 percent of adults who supported impeaching Trump outright.
"Trump may be facing backlash for the call but the irony is now that its contents are out there, it may actually help with his objective," said Murray.