A slight majority of American voters in a new Fox News poll wanted President Donald Trump to be impeached and removed from office.

Fifty-one percent of those surveyed said they wanted Trump impeached and removed from office, and 4% said they wanted Trump to be impeached but not removed.

Forty percent said they opposed impeachment altogether.

The results are consistent with other polls showing a remarkable shift in public opinion over the past several months, as the president grapples with an escalating impeachment inquiry into ways he appeared to use his public office for private gain.

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A slight majority of American voters in a new poll from Fox News wanted President Donald Trump to be impeached and removed from office.

In a record high for the poll, which was conducted October 6-8, 51% of the registered voters who were surveyed said they wanted the president impeached and removed from office, and 4% wanted Trump to be impeached but not removed. Forty percent said they opposed impeachment altogether. The poll had a 3-point margin of sampling error.

The results are consistent with other polls indicating a remarkable shift in public opinion over the past several months, as the president continues grappling with an escalating congressional impeachment inquiry looking at ways he appeared to use his public office for private gain.

At the center of the investigation is a July 25 phone call in which Trump repeatedly pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter on suspicion of corruption. Biden is one of the 2020 Democratic presidential frontrunners and perhaps Trump's chief political rival.

Read more: 'He's giving them all the ammunition they need': Trump is shooting himself in the foot by stonewalling Congress in the impeachment inquiry

The details of that call were outlined in an explosive whistleblower complaint a US intelligence official filed against the president in August. The official alleged in the complaint that Trump abused his power by soliciting foreign interference by the Ukrainian government in the coming election.

Congress released the complaint to the public last month after a fierce tug-of-war with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence over obtaining the document.

Trump with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the InterContinental Barclay New York hotel during the United Nations General Assembly on September 25. Associated Press

Trump and his allies have sought to paint the complaint as false and misleading, but much of it is corroborated by the White House's summary of the call, which Trump released last month. The acting director of national intelligence also testified to Congress that the summary was "in alignment" with the complaint.

The apparent increase in public support for Trump's impeachment was also reflected in a recent Washington Post/Schar School poll, in which a whopping 58% of American adults said they favored House Democrats' impeachment inquiry and 49% said they wanted to see Trump removed from office.

Read more: Trump's approach to the impeachment inquiry bears a striking resemblance to how the Mafia operates

Since July, Post/ABC News polling has found that support for an impeachment investigation has grown by 21 percentage points among Republicans, 25 percentage points among Democrats, and 20 percentage points among those who identify as independents.

A Quinnipiac University poll published September 25 found that just 37% of Americans supported impeaching and removing Trump from office. In a poll published five days later, that number had jumped by 10 percentage points, to 47%.

The White House, meanwhile, is taking a page out of its Russia-investigation playbook as it deals with the impeachment inquiry by refusing to cooperate with the investigation, blocking witnesses from talking to lawmakers, and refusing to turn over documents requested by Congress.

But Louis Seidman, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, told Insider that by obstructing the investigation, the president was giving Democrats "another ground for impeachment."

A former White House official agreed, telling Insider, "He's giving them all the ammunition they need."

Right now, the former official added, "the president needs to be doing everything he can to show he's willing to cooperate and has nothing to hide." The person added: "This won't end well for him if he keeps up his combative stance."