How often have impeachment resolutions led to Senate trials and how many resulted in conviction?

1. What “led to a Senate trial” means in practice and the constitutional baseline

A House impeachment — a simple majority vote to adopt articles — is the constitutional trigger that sends a charge to the Senate, which then “tries” the impeachment and may convict by a two‑thirds vote of Senators present, with removal as the sanction ^{[6] [7]}. The Senate’s power to set trial rules means that once the House transmits articles, a Senate trial is the ordinary next institutional step, although procedural choices (committees, scheduling) shape how the “trial” unfolds ^[7].

2. How often House impeachments have produced Senate trials

Authoritative summaries indicate the House has impeached about twenty individuals in U.S. history — fifteen federal judges, one senator, one cabinet member, and three presidents — and the Senate has held trials for the vast majority of those impeachments ^[1]. The Senate has also tried a Supreme Court justice and a cabinet official among those cases, in addition to the numerous judicial impeachment trials recorded across the centuries ^{[4] [8]}.

3. Convictions: numbers, patterns, and who was removed

By the counts in the Congressional Research Service and Library of Congress products, eight individuals have been convicted by the Senate, and those convicted have been federal judges — not presidents — while several high‑profile nonjudicial impeachments ended in acquittal ^{[1] [4]}. The Senate’s own historical summary states that “about half” of Senate impeachment trials have resulted in conviction and removal, reflecting that convictions cluster in earlier judicial impeachments but are rarer for executive‑branch officials ^[2].

4. Presidential impeachments as a case study

Impeachments of presidents that proceeded to Senate trials have not produced convictions: Andrew Johnson’s 1868 trial fell one vote short of the two‑thirds threshold on key articles (35–19 for conviction on an article but one vote short of two‑thirds) and he was acquitted ^[3], Bill Clinton was acquitted by the Senate in 1999 ^[4], and Donald Trump’s trials resulted in acquittals — including a 57–43 guilty vote in his second Senate trial that nonetheless failed to reach the constitutional two‑thirds required for conviction ^{[5] [9]}. These outcomes underscore that political dynamics in the Senate frequently block removal even when the House musters an impeachment majority.

5. Institutional explanation and observable trends

The two‑thirds supermajority requirement and the political composition of the Senate explain why relatively few impeachments convert into convictions: the mathematically high bar and cross‑party reluctance to remove an elected official make convictions uncommon outside the judiciary, where partisan calculation can differ ^{[7] [1]}. The Senate’s historical record — roughly half of trials ending in conviction according to the Senate’s own account — masks the concentration of convictions among judges and the striking absence of presidential removals ^{[2] [4]}.

6. Limits of the available reporting and open questions

Available sources provide consistent tallies up to recent high‑profile cases and identify eight convictions (all judges) and multiple acquittals of presidents and other officials ^{[1] [4] [5]}, but counts can shift with new impeachments and scholarly updates; the sources used here do not provide an itemized list in this package for every Senate trial, and therefore this account relies on the aggregate figures and specific high‑profile examples reported in the cited documents ^{[1] [2]}.