Most Still
Say Clinton Should Have Been Indicted, 10/21/16, Rasmussen
Most voters still disagree with the
FBI's decision not to seek a criminal indictment of Democratic presidential
nominee Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information when she
was secretary of State, and even more rate the issue as important to their
vote.
A new Rasmussen Reports national
telephone and online survey finds that 39% of Likely U.S. Voters agree with the
FBI’s decision not to indict Clinton after it concluded that she potentially
exposed top secret information to hostile countries when she used a private
e-mail server as secretary of State. But 53% disagree and believe the FBI
should have sought a criminal indictment against her. (To see survey question
wording, click here.)
These findings are basically
unchanged from July when FBI Director James Comey first announced the decision
not to seek an indictment.
Seventy percent (70%) of voters say
Clinton’s mishandling of classified information is important to their vote for
president, with 49% who say it’s Very Important. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say
the issue is not important, but that includes only nine percent (9%) who say
it’s Not At All Important to how they will vote.
Newly released information shows
that a
State Department official offered the FBI a secret deal to take the classified
rating off one of the e-mails Hillary Clinton sent on her private e-mail server. That e-mail was about the incident in Benghazi, Libya
in which four Americans were killed, including the U.S. ambassador, and was one
that triggered the FBI's investigation of Clinton's private e-mail server.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters
was conducted on October 18-19, 2016 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of
sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field
work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse
Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Sixty-five percent (65%) of voters
think it’s
likely Clinton broke the law by sending and receiving e-mails containing
classified information through a private e-mail server while serving as
secretary of State.
Clinton's Republican rival Donald
Trump continues to hammer her about the more than 30,000 e-mails she and her
staff chose to delete and not turn over to the FBI. Sixty-two
percent (62%) of voters think it is likely those e-mails were deleted to hide
something incriminating. Just 34% feel
it would be bad for U.S.-Russia relations if the Russians had obtained those
e-mails through cyberspying and now turned them over to the FBI.
But 85% of Clinton’s supporters
agree with the FBI’s decision not to indict her; 92% of Trump supporters
disagree. Thirty-seven percent (37%) of Clinton voters say the issue is
important to their vote, compared to 96% of Trump voters. Most undecided voters
and supporters of Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein
also consider this an important voting issue.
Eighty-five percent (85%) of
Republicans and 55% of voters not affiliated with either major political party
disagree with the FBI’s decision not to indict Clinton. Just 22% of Democrats
share that view; 70% of voters in Clinton's party agree with the FBI's
decision. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Republicans and 51% of unaffiliateds
consider Clinton’s e-mail issue Very Important to their vote in the election,
but only 23% of Democrats agree.
Men and voters 40 and older are more
likely than women and younger voters to disagree with the FBI’s decision not to
indict Clinton.
Eighty percent (80%) of voters who
disagree with the FBI’s decision say the issue is Very Important to their vote,
compared to just 14% who agree with the decision.
When
it was first disclosed in March of last year that Clinton was using a private
e-mail server while secretary of State, 39%
of all voters said she was deliberately trying to hide things from government
oversight, but 30% didn’t think that was true. Just as many (31%) were
undecided.
Following the release in June of the
final congressional committee report on the Benghazi incident, 49% said Clinton
lied to the families of those killed there when she told them the deaths were
the result of an inflammatory anti-Muslim video on YouTube.
Despite the controversy over her
e-mails, 38%
believe serving as secretary of State is Clinton’s most important professional
accomplishment. In
distant second is her role as first lady which 16% rate most important.
Nearly half of voters still say
their choice this presidential election will be the lesser of two evils, but fortunately
for both candidates, most
also say a candidate's policy positions are more important than their
character.
Forty-six
percent (46%) of voters believe both Trump and Clinton are less ethical than
their political peers. Fifty-six
percent (56%) consider both Clinton and Trump liars.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters
was conducted on
October 18-19, 2016 by Rasmussen
Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95%
level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted
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