Support for impeaching President Trump, especially among Democrats, is up modestly in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) announcement that she supports an “official impeachment inquiry,” a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds. Trying to gauge public opinion about a poorly understood, fast-moving story rarely lends itself to easy takeaways. Polls on impeachment vary massively depending on how they’re worded, and tracking polls can and do fluctuate even when there’s no underlying cause. Other surveys released this week don’t yet add up to a clear consensus about how Americans are reacting to the latest news. What is clear, however, is that support for impeachment shows no signs of going away, especially among Trump’s opponents, that opinions remain deeply polarized and that only a small minority of the public is willing to defend Trump’s latest actions outright. In the HuffPost/YouGov survey, taken between Tuesday night and Thursday morning, Americans say by an 8-point margin, 47% to 39%, that they support impeaching and removing President Trump from office. That’s up from a 2-point margin earlier this month, and the widest margin of support of any HuffPost/YouGov survey taken since this spring.

Ariel Edwards-Levy/HuffPost

The shift this month appears mainly due to increased support among Democrats, whose support for impeachment rose from 74% earlier in September to 81% in the latest poll. Support from independents remained largely stable, clocking in at 35% in the previous poll and 37% in the latest. Republican support has, if anything, ticked down, from 16% earlier in September to 11% at present. Some Democrats may be changing their minds in reaction to the latest news, but it’s likely they’re also following the cues of their increasingly united party leaders. About three-quarters of Democrats now say that they believe most or all congressional Democrats support impeachment, up from 59% who said the same earlier this month. Those sorts of elite cues are important because, as the HuffPost/YouGov poll finds, there’s still significant public uncertainty about both the impeachment process and the details of the latest controversy. Only about half of Americans know that a successful impeachment vote in the House would be followed by a trial in the Senate. And although Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president, during which he pressed for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, is the touchstone for congressional Democrats’ current impeachment push, that’s not necessarily what’s motivating everyone who backs the process. Only 37% of Americans said they’d heard a lot about the call, with a fifth saying they’d heard nothing at all. Just 39% of Americans say that phone call specifically justifies impeaching Trump, with a virtually identical 38% saying it doesn’t. Nearly a quarter aren’t sure. That’s not to say that the public doesn’t view the call largely in a negative light. Americans say, 52% to 23%, that it’s inappropriate for Trump to ask the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden’s son, with another 24% not sure. About half call the conversation at least a “somewhat serious” problem, although only about a third say it’s very serious. Americans say, 43% to 28%, that they don’t believe most politicians in the U.S. would be willing to ask a foreign government to investigate a political opponent. Opinions are starkly divided along partisan lines, although Democrats are more unanimous in their condemnation of Trump than Republicans are in his defense. More than 80% of Democrats say it’s inappropriate for Trump to ask Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden’s son, and about three-quarters say the call is at least a somewhat serious problem. By contrast, about half of Republicans say it’s appropriate for Trump to ask Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden’s son, with only 19% calling it outright inappropriate, and only about a fifth thinking it poses even a somewhat serious problem. Independents, meanwhile, ostensibly the group most open to changing their minds about Trump (most, in fact, lean generally toward one party or the other), are also the least likely to be paying close attention.