Disapproval of Donald Trump is at a new high, support for the Mueller investigation is broad and half of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll favor Congress initiating impeachment proceedings against the president. 
 
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 Sixty percent in the national survey disapprove of Trump’s performance in office, numerically the highest of his presidency, albeit by a single point; that includes 53 percent who disapprove strongly, more than half for the first time. Thirty-six percent approve, matching his low. 
 
 See PDF for full results, charts and tables. 
 
 Mary Altaffer/AP, FILE 
 
 The results come a week after Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted of fraud, and his former longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight felonies, including illegal campaign finance actions that he said Trump directed. 
 
 Trump’s average approval rating since taking office is the lowest for any president in modern polling since the 1940s. One factor: Contrary to his “drain the swamp” rhetoric, 45 percent say corruption in Washington has increased under Trump, while just 13 percent say it’s declined. 
 
 Jonathan Ernst/Reuters 
 
 Suspicions of the president relating to the Mueller investigation are substantial. Sixty-one percent say that if assertions by Cohen are true, Trump broke the law. Fifty-three percent also think Trump obstructed special counsel Robert Mueller’s work. 
 
 The national survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds that half the public supports Congress initiating impeachment proceedings against Trump, 49-46 percent; support rises to 57 percent among women. And support for the investigation running its course is broader: Americans overall back Mueller’s probe by 63-29 percent. Fifty-two percent support it strongly, a high level of strong sentiment. 
 
 Andrew Harnik/AP, FILE 
 
 Mueller prosecuted Manafort and referred the Cohen case to federal prosecutors in New York. Support for Mueller’s investigation peaks at 85 percent among Democrats, but also takes in 67 percent of independents and even a third of Republicans (32 percent). Forty-one percent of conservatives back Mueller, rising to more than seven in 10 moderates and liberals. 
 
 In Trump’s dispute with Attorney General Jeff Sessions for allowing the investigation to proceed, the public sides with Sessions, 62-23 percent. Sixty-four percent also oppose the idea of Trump firing Sessions; just 19 percent support it. 
 
 Further, while Trump has railed against the Manafort prosecution, Americans call it justified by an overwhelming 67-17 percent, including nearly half of Republicans. The public opposes Trump pardoning Manafort by essentially the same margin, 66-18 percent, with 53 percent strongly opposed. Even among Republicans, 45 percent oppose a Manafort pardon; 36 percent support it. 
 
 The damage to Trump on these ethics concerns overwhelms his better rating for handling the economy, an essentially even split, 45-47 percent. That demonstrates that a good economy only makes it possible for a president to be popular – it’s no guarantee. 
 
 Approval, Groups 
 
 The president’s approval rating is highly partisan, but with relative challenges for Trump across the board. His job rating matches his low among Republicans (78 percent approve) and Democrats (6 percent) alike. It’s 35 percent among independents. 
 
 He’s at new lows among college-educated Americans (albeit just by a point; 29 percent approve), moderates (24 percent) and blacks (3 percent, with a nearly unanimous 93 percent disapproving). 
 
 The single biggest shift is among college-educated white women – just 23 percent now approve of Trump, down 17 points from the peak in April 2017, with disapproval up 20 points, from 55 percent then to 75 percent now. Still, even among non-college white men, a core Trump group, his approval is down 15 points, from 70 percent just this spring to 55 percent today. 
 
 Other Group Results 
 
 Trump’s approval rating is 12 points lower among women than men, and that gender gap is reflected elsewhere. As noted, 57 percent of women favor Congress initiating impeachment proceedings; that drops to 40 percent of men. 
 
 Seventy percent of liberals support impeachment proceedings, declining to 51 percent of moderates and 30 percent of conservatives. Impeachment support is highest, a vast 80 percent, among blacks; 37 percent of whites agree. 
 
 Some of these gaps narrow on whether or not the charges against Manafort were justified. Two-thirds of men and women alike say they were, as do two-thirds of whites – including 64 percent of white men without college degrees. Even among Republicans, conservatives and those who approve of Trump’s work in office, more see the charges as justified than as unjustified, by 48-28, 49-30 and 47-29 percent, respectively. (The rest express no opinion.) 
 
 As noted, 45 percent of Republicans oppose Trump pardoning Manafort, with 36 percent support. It’s similar among conservatives, 46-34 percent. Trump approvers split about evenly on a Manafort pardon, with 39 percent opposed, 37 percent in favor. 
 
 Opposition to a pardon goes higher in other groups – 68 percent among men and 64 percent among women, for example (no real difference between them), 64 percent among whites and Hispanics alike, and 82 percent among blacks. 
 
 Sixty-one percent, as noted, say that if Cohen’s claim that he acted at Trump’s direction is true, Trump committed a crime. That view is lowest among Republicans, 28 percent. But there’s concern for Trump in other core groups: A substantial minority of conservatives, 41 percent, say he broke the law if Cohen’s telling the truth. So do 44 percent of evangelical white Protestants, 52 percent of whites and 52 percent of non-college white men, all groups whose support Trump needs. 
 
 Methodology 
 
 This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Aug. 26-29, 2018, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,003 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.6 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 33-25-37 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents. 
 
 The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt Associates of Rockville, Md. See details on the survey’s methodology here. 

 President Trump stops to talk to reporters and members of the media as he make his way to board the Marine One helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House on Aug. 17, 2018. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) 
 
 President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a high point of 60 percent, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that also finds that clear majorities of Americans support the special counsel’s Russia investigation and say the president should not fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 
 
 At the dawn of the fall campaign sprint to the midterm ­elections, which will determine whether Democrats retake control of Congress, the poll finds that a majority of the public has turned against Trump and is on guard against his efforts to influence the Justice Department and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s wide-ranging probe. 
 
 Nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, say Congress should begin impeachment proceedings that could lead to Trump being removed from office, while 46 percent say Congress should not. 
 
 [Read full poll results | How the poll was conducted] 
 
 And a narrow majority — 53 percent — say they think Trump has tried to interfere with Mueller’s investigation in a way that amounts to obstruction of justice; 35 percent say they do not think the president has tried to interfere. 
 
 Overall, 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance, with 36 percent approving, according to the poll. Because of random sampling variation, this represents only a marginal shift from the last Post-ABC survey, in April, which measured Trump’s rating at 56 percent disapproval and 40 percent approval. 
 
 The new poll was conducted Aug. 26 to 29, in the week after former Trump campaign chairman 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. 
 
 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 Nov. 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 percent of Americans approve and 47 percent disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. 
 
 [Trump at a precarious moment in his presidency: Privately brooding and publicly roaring] 
 
 Trump’s overall popularity breaks down along lines of partisanship, ethnicity and gender, according to the poll. While 78 percent of Republicans approve of his performance, 93 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of independents disapprove. More men support him than women, and while 45 percent of whites back him, 19 percent of nonwhites approve. 
 
 The poll finds that there are clear limitations to Trump’s efforts all summer to politicize and discredit the Russia investigation. The president has fired a near-daily barrage of tweets labeling the probe a “witch hunt” and attacking the credibility of Mueller and several current and former Justice Department officials. 
 
 But 63 percent of Americans support Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, with 52 percent saying they support it strongly; 29 percent oppose the probe. 
 
 Opinions on Mueller’s work also break down along partisan lines, with 61 percent of Republicans opposing the probe but an even larger 85 percent of Democrats expressing support. Among independents, however, a two-thirds majority of 67 percent back the investigation. 
 
 Trump has complained that Manafort was treated unfairly by Mueller’s prosecutors, and after a jury convicted Manafort last month, the president tweeted that he felt “very badly” for him. 
 
 But 67 percent of Americans think Mueller’s case against Manafort was justified, while 17 percent say it was unjustified, according to the poll. 
 
 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 percent strongly oppose it — and 18 percent 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 percent of Americans do not think Trump should fire Sessions, with 19 percent saying he should and 17 percent saying they have no opinion. Nearly half of Republicans, 47 percent, say Trump should not fire the attorney general, with 31 percent saying he should. 
 
 Just under a quarter of Americans, 23 percent, say they agree with Trump’s criticisms of Sessions for allowing the Mueller investigation to proceed, while 62 percent 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 [Michael Cohen says he worked to silence two women ‘in coordination’ with Trump to influence 2016 election] 
 
 The poll finds that 61 percent of Americans think that Trump committed a crime if he did direct Cohen to make the payments, while 31 percent 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 energized 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 percent of Democrats say Congress should begin impeachment hearings, 82 percent of Republicans say lawmakers should not. Among independents, 49 percent support impeachment while 46 percent oppose it. 
 
 The Post-ABC poll was conducted among a random national sample of 1,003 adults reached on conventional and cellphones; the margin of sampling error for overall results is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. 
 
 Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
– A new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News finds that President Trump's disapproval rating has hit 60% for the first time. That's the percentage of overall voters who don't approve of Trump's performance, though the partisan split remains enormous. Among Republicans, 78% approve of Trump's performance, while only 6% of Democrats feel the same way. Independents are roughly in the middle of those extremes at 35%. Overall, Trump's approval rating is at 36%. Some of the other numbers: 63% support Robert Mueller's investigation; 61% of Republicans oppose the probe, while 85% of Democrats and 67% of independents support it 64% say Trump should not fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a sentiment backed by 47% of Republicans 23% of college-educated white women approve of Trump, which is down 17 points from April 2017 49% say Congress should begin impeachment proceedings 45% of whites support him versus 19% of non-whites