Exclusive: Poll Shows Americans Side with Trump over Mueller Probe
A national poll conducted of 1,000 likely voters by McLaughlin & Associates and former Clinton pollster Dick Morris provided exclusively to Breitbart News shows support for President Trump and suspicion of the investigation of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.
By a margin of 51 percent to 33 percent, voters do not believe Mueller has found “real evidence of corruption by the president.”
More specifically, by a margin of 10 points, 43 percent to 33 percent, voters feel that Mueller has not uncovered any evidence that “President Trump colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.”
A plurality of voters, 43 percent to 35 percent, said that Mueller’s investigation has “overstepped its designated purpose to investigate links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Trump by investigating individuals who had nothing to do with Russia.”
The poll also shows that voters are losing patience with Mueller’s probe.
Asked if they think “the investigation being conducted by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has gone on for too long and cost too much,” voters agreed by a 20 point margin, 52 percent to 32 percent.
Mueller does not fare well when it comes to voter attitudes regarding the fairness of his investigation.
When voters were asked if Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller “is fairly investigating the president and just following the facts or if he is doing all he can to make a case against the president to try to remove him from office?” voters broke even with 40.4 percent saying he is just following the facts and 39.7 percent saying he is doing all he can to remove Trump from office.
A majority of voters believe that Trump’s critics are primarily motivated by their desire to stop his agenda.
By a 10 point margin, 50 percent to 40 percent, voters said that Trump’s critics “need to stop hounding the president and let him do his job.”
But that same majority does not want President Trump to fire Mueller, by a larger margin.
Fifty-two percent of voters do not want the president to fire Mueller, while 29 percent favor his firing, a 23 point margin.
By a similar margin, 20 points (56 percent to 36 percent) voters said that if the president did fire Mueller it would indicate that “the president has something to hide.”
On the very important question of whether the rights of the president and his attorney Michael Cohen were violated by the search orchestrated by Mueller of Cohen’s offices, the plurality of voters, 46 percent, agree that Mueller should not have searched Cohen’s office because the president “deserves the protection of attorney-client privilege.” But 40 percent of voters, disagreed, demonstrating a narrow division on the issue in the country, with Americans siding against Mueller’s actions in the Cohen office search by 6 percent.
The poll results also demonstrated the extreme polarization of the country.
Fifty-two percent of voters disapprove of President Trump’s job performance, while 46 percent approve, a net disapproval rating of 6 percent.
Forty-five percent of voters oppose beginning impeachment proceedings against President Trump, while 42 percent support it.
Support for impeachment is primarily from Democrats, highlighting the bitterly partisan divides within the country today.
Asked which generic candidate they would support for Congress, voters gave Democrats only a 0.3 percent advantage, 43.8 percent, compared to 43.5 for Republicans, which is within the poll’s margin of error.
The McLaughlin & Associates/Dick Morris poll is 5 points better for Republicans than the current Real Clear Politics Average of Polls, which gives the Democrats a 5.5 percent advantage in the generic Congressional ballot.
As Breitbart News has reported, because of the Republican gerrymandering advantage in state legislatures after the 2010 census, the Democrats generally are thought to need at least a 5 point margin in national surveys to retake control because so many Democratic districts are between 80 percent and 95 percent Democrat while most Republican seats have a more closely divided partisan breakout.
“The survey shows a pretty constant ten point margin for the president over Mueller. So, in effect, all Democrats support Mueller and all Republicans oppose him but, among independents, half oppose Mueller and half are undecided, giving Trump the edge,” Morris told Breitbart News.
“But,” Morris cautioned “Trump can’t take it too far. Any attempt to remove Mueller would trigger a likely fatal backlash.”
Pollster McLaughlin added similar cautions.
“So far all special counsel Mueller has done is added to the partisan polarization of a sharply divided country,” he told Breitbart News.
“Most voters see the Mueller investigation through political lenses. Ironically if the President can increase his positive job approval rating beyond his base to rise among independents and moderates, just like President Clinton did, public opinion will turn against Mueller. So far the Mueller investigation appears to be simply a partisan tool that will go to any length to stop President Trump from succeeding,” McLaughlin concluded.
The national poll of 1,000 likely voters was conducted on April 22 and has a margin of error of 3.1 percent.
Thirty-six percent of respondents were Democrats, 33 percent were Republicans, and 31 percent were Independents. Seventy-one percent were White, 12 percent were African-American, 11 percent were Hispanic, and 4 percent were Asian. Fifty-three percent of respondents were female, 47 percent were male.
“This breakdown is modeled after the 2016 presidential election,” McLaughlin told Breitbart News.