Roughly two in 10 Americans approve of President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter and in doing so spectacularly reverse the octogenarian’s previous pledges to do no such thing, according to a poll released Wednesday.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll notes the displeasure corresponds to the bi-partisan uproar the move sparked in Washington, DC. AP reports:
The survey found that a relatively small share of Americans “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of the pardon, which came after the younger Biden was convicted on gun and tax charges.
About half said they “strongly” or “somewhat” disapprove, and about 2 in 10 neither approve nor disapprove.
The AP report continues to note the Democratic president had said vowed not use his pardon power for the benefit of his family, and the White House continued to insist, even after Republican Donald Trump’s election win in November, that Biden’s position had not changed.
FLASHBACK: White House Insisted Joe Biden Wouldn’t Pardon Hunter Right After Trump Won Election
Then Biden performed his spectacular public backflip.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre sought to ameliorate the move by saying it was a decision that Biden struggled with but came to shortly before he made the announcement, “because of how politically infected these cases were” as well as “what his political opponents were trying to do.”
The poll also found some four in 10 Democrats approve of the pardon, while about three in 10 disapprove and about one-quarter did not have an opinion or did not know enough to say.
Some simply refuse to address the matter at all:
Chuck Schumer does NOT want to talk about Hunter's pardon! pic.twitter.com/tIA2EAoRMy
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) December 4, 2024
The vast majority of Republicans and about half of independents had a negative opinion.
The poll of 1,251 adults was conducted Dec. 5-9, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
