It always surprised me how people were so shocked by the fact that Trump was not removed from office after he was impeached the first time. That was, until I discovered just how prevalent misconceptions regarding both the process and history of impeachment actually are. As soon as it was announced that the House had returned articles of impeachment the first time around, the first thing I did was look up the exact party balance in the Senate: it was obvious that it was just not going to happen.
Since the 1960s, divided government has been the norm in American politics (with a few brief exceptions). Divided government means that neither party controls both the executive and legislative branches, and the split in Congress is often close to 50/50 with one party holding a slight majority in one chamber, and the other party barely in control of the other. When the party in control of the House is different from the party of the president, the frequency of discussions about and attempts to impeach the president tend to increase. But talking about impeachment, “investigating” impeachment, and actually pulling it off are two very different things. It’s a lot harder than it seems.
Below are some of the more frequent misconceptions about the impeachment process that have come up both in my classroom and in everyday discussions.
Misconception #1: Impeachment Equals Removal From Office
This fundamental misconception is the root cause from which most misunderstandings stem. Impeachment only refers to the bringing of formal charges (similar to how a grand jury returns an indictment in a criminal case.) The US Constitution gives “the sole Power of Impeachment” to the House of Representatives. This means that the House decides whether there is sufficient evidence to charge the President (or any federal officer) for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” If more than 50% of Representatives vote to impeach, then the Constitution gives the Senate “the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” This means that the Senate holds the trial and then has a vote to determine guilt. Conviction (and removal from office) requires a two-thirds vote of the Senators present.
This two-step structure is important to understand because every single impeachment of a U.S. president has stalled at step two. Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House in 1868 and acquitted by the Senate by a single vote. Bill Clinton was impeached by the House in 1998 and acquitted by the Senate in 1999, falling well short of the two-thirds threshold on both articles. Donald Trump was impeached twice — in 2019 and again in 2021 — and acquitted by the Senate both times. In every one of these cases, “impeached” was the headline, but “acquitted” was the actual outcome.
Misconception #2: Presidents have been Removed From Office Through Impeachment
No U.S. president has ever been removed from office as a result of an impeachment trial. Not one, not ever, in the entire history of the republic.
Andrew Johnson (Abraham Lincoln’s successor) was the closest call but still was not removed. He was impeached in 1868 over his attempt to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in apparent violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The Senate vote to convict came up one vote short of the two-thirds majority required — 35 to 19, 36 were needed. Johnson finished his term as President. He chose not to run for re-election, possibly as a result of his being impeached and a notoriously unpopular president, but still he was not forcibly removed from office.
The only president to leave office over an impeachment-adjacent situation was Nixon, however he was never actually impeached–which brings us to our next and perhaps the most frequent historical misconception.
Misconception #3: Nixon Was Impeached
An extremely common impeachment myth, due to Nixon’s downfall and voluntary resignation being one the most infamous moments in presidential history. However, despite his misdeeds and his own audio recordings of those misdeeds (which the Supreme Court ordered him to hand over despite his claims of executive privilege). In July 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to approve three articles of impeachment against Nixon, related to the Watergate cover-up. However, Nixon resigned from office on August 9, 1974, before the entire House could actually vote on the articles of impeachment.
In today’s political climate, talks of impeachment have become almost commonplace, our current president has been impeached twice, and during Biden’s four year term Republicans in Congress spoke frequently about impeaching and even launched an investigation. However, at the time of Nixon’s resignation it had been more than 100 years since a president had been impeached. Had he been convicted by the Senate (which most believed was a near certainty) he would have gone down as the only president in US history to have ever been formally removed from office through the impeachment process.
So just to be clear on this one: Nixon was investigated for impeachment, the House Judiciary committee recommended impeachment, but since he resigned before the entire house could vote was never actually impeached in the formal, constitutional sense. He’s the only president to leave office mid-term due to an impeachment-related situation, yet still managed to escape both impeachment and a trial in the Senate. The distinction is both a technicality and yet somehow still feels significant.
Misconception #4: Impeachment is Only about Presidents
Presidential impeachments get most of the attention, so it’s easy to understand why most assume impeachment is a presidential-specific constitutional check on power. It isn’t. The Constitution applies impeachment to “the President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States.” It is actually federal judges who are the most frequent targets of impeachment. Far more often than presidents. Of the roughly twenty federal officials impeached by the House since 1789, the majority have been judges–several of whom have been convicted and removed by the Senate.
Misconception #5: If a President Is Removed, We Hold a New Election
This is less common among adults but is a common assumption that many students have when we learn about impeachment. They tend to initially conceive of impeachment as a kind of political do-over, which seems on many levels preferable, but is not what happens. Article II and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment lay out a fixed line of succession: if a president is removed, dies, resigns, or becomes unable to serve (such as through impeachment), the Vice President immediately becomes President for the rest of the term. No special election gets called. The country doesn’t go back to the ballot box; it simply finishes the existing four-year term under the disgraced President’s existing second-in-command. Which, honestly does seem a bit strange.
The Partisan Reality of Impeachment
Given the documented misdeeds of US presidents, it begs the question–why hasn’t a single US president actually been removed from office after being impeached? What would it really take? The answer to the first question is actually fairly simple: political parties. The second: not so much. Every single presidential impeachment in U.S. history has been a fundamentally partisan event, and every acquittal has depended on the president’s own party holding the line.
| Impeachment | President’s Party | House Control | House Vote to Impeach | Senate Control at Trial | Senate Vote (Guilty–Not Guilty) | President’s Own Party Voting Guilty |
| Andrew Johnson (1868) | Nominally aligned w/ Democrats* | Republican supermajority | 126–47 | ~45 R–9 D | 35–19 (needed 36) | 0 of 9 Democrats |
| Bill Clinton (1999) | Democrat | Republican, 228R–206D | Art. I: 228–206 / Art. II: 221–212 | 55 R–45 D | Art. I: 45–55 / Art. II: 50–50 (needed 67) | 0 of 45 Democrats |
| Trump, 1st trial (2020) | Republican | Democratic, 233D–197R | Art. I: 230–197 / Art. II: 229–198 | 53 R–47 D | Art. I: 48–52 / Art. II: 47–53 (needed 67) | 1 of 53 Republicans (Romney, Art. I only) |
| Trump, 2nd trial (2021) | Republican | Democratic, 222D–213R | 232–197 | 50 R–50 D (VP tiebreak) | 57–43 (needed 67) | 7 of 50 Republicans |
Article II of the Constitution states that the only grounds for impeachment are: “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The exact meaning of and what qualifies as “high crimes and misdemeanors” has always been a subject of much debate.
Andrew Johnson is a genuinely odd case. He was a Southern Democrat who’d joined Lincoln’s ticket for unity, became President after Lincoln’s assassination and then was impeached by the very Republican Congress whose Reconstruction policies he’d betrayed. However, the math still holds: every vote to convict and remove from office came from Republicans, and only fell one short because ten of them broke ranks.
Looking at the above table, you can see how the House only needs a simple majority to impeach: whichever party controls it can impeach a president from the other party whenever it has the votes and the will — which is exactly why impeachment talk has become more frequent as divided government has become the norm rather than the exception. But the Senate’s two-thirds threshold for conviction is a different kind of math entirely. Unless one party holds a senate supermajority — which hasn’t happened since the 1960s — removing a president would require a significant number of senators from his own party to vote against them.
That’s a much bigger ask than it looks like on paper. A senator who votes to convict a president of their own party isn’t only rendering a judgment about that president’s conduct — they’re handing the opposing party a political win, undercutting their own party’s position heading into the next election. Most Senators cannot win re-election without the support of their own party (both the organization and in the electorate.) A vote against a president of one’s own party is very much construed as a betrayal. Romney’s vote against Trump in 2020 was the first time in American history a senator voted to convict a president of his own party — and it drew exactly the kind of backlash one would expect. Even the seven Republicans who crossed over in Trump’s second impeachment trial of 2021–the largest same-party defection in impeachment history–still landed ten votes short of the 67 needed. Some paid a real political price for it afterward.
Though it is perfectly understandable that one would expect for partisanship not to be a factor in deciding guilt or innocence–it has been the single biggest predictor of how a Senator will vote when it comes to removing a president from office. And since no party has had anywhere close to ⅔ control of the Senate in over a half a century–it is a very simple explanation to the question of why no president has ever been removed from office.
So a divided government produces an almost paradoxical effect: a lot more talk of impeachment and the illusion of holding leaders accountable, but a real decrease in the likelihood that leaders will actually be held accountable for their misdeeds.
Why the Confusion Persists
Part of the problem is that “impeach” sounds like it should mean something more dramatic than it does. The word itself suggests finality, when constitutionally it’s only the first step of the process. Another possible reason is that we don’t get a lot of repetitions to learn from; presidential impeachments are rare enough that most people’s mental model gets built from a single, half-remembered, sensationalized news cycle. “President Impeached!” is catchier than “President impeached by the House but conviction and removal by Senate unlikely due to current party balance, likely to remain in office.”
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