Overall, 60 per cent of Americans disapprove of Trump's job performance, with 36 per cent approving, according to the poll. This is only a slight shift from the last Post-ABC survey, in April, which measured Trump's rating at 56 per cent disapproval and 40 per cent approval. The new poll was conducted between August 26 and 29, in the week after former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted of federal tax and bank fraud and after former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty and implicated the President in illegal payments to silence women who alleged sexual encounters with Trump. About half of Americans surveyed in the latest poll support impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. Credit:Bloomberg The four-month gap between Post-ABC polls makes it difficult to attribute the modest uptick in disapproval of Trump to specific events. Other public polls have shown Trump's disapproval rating in the low-to-mid-50s and have not tracked a rise since the Manafort conviction and Cohen guilty plea. Trump has tried to rally support for Republican candidates in the November 6 elections by pointing to his economic record. This week's poll finds that despite the President's unpopularity with voters, he gets better ratings when it comes to the economy: 45 per cent of Americans approve and 47 per cent disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy.

Trump's overall popularity breaks down along lines of partisanship, ethnicity and gender, according to the poll. While 78 per cent of Republicans approve of his performance, 93 per cent of Democrats and 59 per cent of independents disapprove. More men support him than women, and while 45 per cent of whites back him, 19 per cent of non-whites approve. Loading The poll finds that there are clear limitations to Trump's efforts all summer to politicise and discredit the Russia investigation. The President has fired a near-daily barrage of tweets labelling the probe a "witch hunt" and attacking the credibility of Mueller and several current and former Justice Department officials. But 63 per cent of Americans support Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, with 52 per cent saying they support it strongly; 29 per cent oppose the probe. Opinions on Mueller's work also break down on partisan lines, with 61 per cent of Republicans opposing the probe but an even larger 85 per cent of Democrats expressing support. Among independents, however, a two-thirds majority of 67 per cent back the investigation.

Trump has complained that Manafort was treated unfairly by Mueller's prosecutors, and after a jury convicted Manafort earlier this month the President tweeted that he felt "very badly" for him. But 67 per cent of Americans think Mueller's case against Manafort was justified, while 17 per cent say it was unjustified, according to the poll. Loading Trump's praise of Manafort has stirred speculation that he might pardon his former campaign chairman, but the poll finds that it would be a political land mine for the President. Two-thirds of Americans oppose Trump pardoning Manafort - 53 per cent strongly oppose it - and 18 per cent support a pardon. Trump has ratcheted up his public attacks on Sessions in recent weeks and has consulted his personal attorneys and other advisers about firing the Attorney-General, whom he has viewed as insufficiently loyal after Sessions recused himself last year from overseeing the Russia investigation because of a conflict of interest.

But the public is squarely behind Sessions. Sixty-four per cent of Americans do not think Trump should fire Sessions, with 19 per cent saying he should and 17 per cent saying they have no opinion. Nearly half of Republicans, 47 per cent, say Trump should not fire the Attorney-General, with 31 per cent saying he should. Just under a quarter of Americans, 23 per cent, say they agree with Trump's criticisms of Sessions for allowing the Mueller investigation to proceed, while 62 per cent say they side with Sessions, who has said he is following the law. Two-thirds of Americans say they had read or heard at least some of the news about Cohen's guilty plea to eight violations of banking, tax and campaign finance laws, though less than a quarter heard "a great deal" about the news. Loading Cohen told a federal judge last week that before the 2016 campaign, then-candidate Trump directed him to pay off two women to keep their stories of alleged affairs with Trump from becoming public.

The poll finds that 61 per cent of Americans think that Trump committed a crime if he did direct Cohen to make the payments, while 31 per cent say he did not commit a crime. Democrats are hoping to retake control of one or both houses of Congress in November's elections. If they do, party leaders will face pressure from their energised base to use congressional oversight committees to investigate potential misconduct by the President and his administration, as well as perhaps begin impeachment proceedings. The survey finds a clear partisan divide on the issue. While 75 per cent of Democrats say Congress should begin impeachment hearings, 82 per cent of Republicans say legislators should not. Among independents, 49 per cent support impeachment while 46 per cent oppose it. The Post-ABC poll was conducted among a random national sample of 1,003 adults reached on conventional and mobile phones; the margin of sampling error for overall results is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Washington Post