Poll: 40 percent of Democrats want Speaker other than Pelosi

Forty percent of Democrats would like to see a Speaker other than Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) when the party takes control of the House in January, according to a new poll.

The CBS News poll published Monday found that about half of Democrats — 49 percent — want Pelosi to be elected Speaker. Another 10 percent of respondents said they didn’t know, according to the poll. 

Additionally, 76 percent of Republicans polled and 58 percent of independents surveyed said they would like to see someone other than Pelosi at the helm. 

{mosads}The poll’s results were based on interviews with a random sample of 1,103 adults from Nov. 15 to 18. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 3 percentage point, but it is 6 percentage points among the subgroup of Democrats.

The poll comes as Democrats in the House remain somewhat divided over whether to support Pelosi, who has been the party’s leader in the House for 15 years, as the next Speaker.

On Monday, 16 Democrats signed a letter opposing Pelosi’s bid for Speaker.

In the letter, they argued that fresh leadership is necessary because Democrats “ran and won on a message of change.”

“Our majority came on the backs of candidates who said that they would support new leadership because voters in hard-won districts, and across the country, want to see real change in Washington,” they wrote.