Increasingly skeptical

Poll: Democrats becoming increasingly skeptical of fairness of Russia probe

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

Since the public release of a redacted version of the Mueller report, Democrats have grown more skeptical that the Russia investigation was conducted fairly, according to a new poll.

Voters in general have grown more dubious about the Justice Department’s lengthy investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to the POLITICO/Morning Consult survey, tipping the scales away from net trust in the probe as lawmakers prepare to grill the special counsel on Wednesday morning.

By a 5-point margin, the poll found that, overall, there’s more skepticism about how the Justice Department conducted its investigation than trust that it was carried out fairly: 37 percent of voters said that they believed Mueller’s investigation had been carried out very or somewhat fairly, compared with 42 percent who said the probe was conducted “not too fairly” or “not fairly at all.”

Both Democrats and Republicans have tilted toward a belief that the inquiry, which wrapped up this spring after almost two years, was not conducted fairly. An April survey — conducted shortly after the report’s release — found that 46 percent of voters thought the probe had been fair, compared with 29 percent who felt it had been unfair.

But there was a much bigger swing among Democrats, the most recent poll found. Among Democratic voters, the number who consider the investigation unfair shot up by 15 percentage points since then, while the number who thought it had been a fair investigation dropped by 9 points.

It’s unclear what accounts for Democrats’ plummeting confidence — it’s possible that they feel the investigation was unfair in that the outcome was too favorable to President Donald Trump; believe that Mueller was boxed in by Trump’s Justice Department; or feel that it’s unfair because the president has not faced any serious consequences as a result of the investigation.

Wednesday’s poll backs this up: It found a 42-41 split among voters over whether or not they thought Trump’s campaign worked with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, but 72 percent of Democrats were in the overall majority that felt the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia.

Republicans have also become more skeptical of the investigation, with distrust growing and trust falling 6 points each since April. But it’s more likely that those opinions have been shaped by doubt cast by Trump, his allies and Attorney General William Barr on the origins of the Russia investigation, a matter under review by several parties, including the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.

“Our polling suggests Republicans and Democrats alike are expressing growing skepticism around the handling of the Mueller probe,” said Tyler Sinclair, Morning Consult’s vice president. “This week, 42 percent of Democrats and 42 percent of Republicans believe the probe was handled unfairly, compared with 27 percent of Democrats and 36 percent of Republicans who said the same in April following the release of the redacted report.”

The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll was conducted July 19-21 online among a national sample of 1992 registered voters. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.