What vote margins are required in the House and Senate during presidential impeachment and removal?

1. How impeachment starts — a House majority is sufficient

The Constitution assigns the House the “sole Power of Impeachment,” and in practice the House approves articles of impeachment by a simple majority vote — once an article is adopted by that majority the official is impeached and the charges are transmitted to the Senate ^{[2] [1] [5]}. Sources consistently describe this as a straightforward, simple‑majority threshold in the House: the political decision to impeach is resolved by more votes in favor than against under whatever voting rules the House adopts ^{[2] [1]}.

2. The Senate’s role — trial, verdict and a supermajority for removal

The Senate “shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments,” and the Constitution requires the concurrence of two‑thirds of the Senators present to convict on any article — conviction on any one article effects removal from office ^{[3] [4] [5]}. Repeated explanations from the Senate, Congress.gov, and legal reference sources emphasize that the two‑thirds threshold is a constitutional supermajority, not a simple majority rule, and it applies to each article on which the Senate votes ^{[3] [4] [5]}.

3. Practical corollaries — presiding officer and limits on punishment

In a presidential trial the Chief Justice of the United States presides over the Senate trial rather than the Vice President or a Senator, and Senators must take an oath or affirmation to consider the case — procedural details that underscore the distinctiveness of presidential impeachments ^{[3] [4]}. The Senate’s punishments upon conviction are limited by the Constitution to removal from office and possible disqualification from holding future federal office; other penalties are outside the Senate’s remedial scope ^[4].

4. Disqualification from future office — a separate, lower bar

If the Senate convicts and removes, it may then hold a separate vote to disqualify the individual from holding future federal office; historical practice and authoritative summaries indicate this post‑conviction disqualification requires only a simple majority, not the two‑thirds supermajority used for removal ^{[6] [5]}. The distinction matters because removal and disqualification are separate judgments under congressional practice and precedent ^[5].

5. How the rules work in practice — individual articles, present Senators, political realities

Conviction requires two‑thirds of Senators present to concur on at least one article, so the number of Senators voting and the text of each article can change the arithmetic — a president has not been convicted and removed by the Senate in U.S. history, and several high‑profile impeachments ended in acquittal because the two‑thirds threshold was not met even when a majority voted to convict on particular counts ^{[7] [8] [6]}. Congress’s procedural choices — for example how many senators are present, whether the Senate adopts special trial rules, or whether the Senate separates the disqualification vote — can influence outcomes but do not alter the constitutional two‑thirds standard for conviction ^{[4] [9]}.

6. Competing interpretations and political imperatives

Legal historians and congressional scholars caution that impeachment is both legal and intensely political: although the Constitution sets vote margins, what constitutes “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” and whether senators will cross party lines are political judgments as much as legal ones, and past acquittals reflect that interplay between law, proof, and party loyalty ^{[10] [8]}. Sources make clear that procedural maneuvers—such as rules for witnesses or cloture-like steps—can shape trials, but they do not change the constitutional two‑thirds requirement to convict ^{[4] [9]}.