POLITICO/Morning Consult Poll: 57% of Registered 'Independent' Voters say Biden's Son’s Ukraine Job Was 'a Scandal'

32% of Independents, whose support will be crucial in a General Election, say a probe is warranted

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Texas Insider Report) — According to a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult Poll, a strong majority of Registered U.S. Voters believe it was  "a scandal" for Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden to work for and have a job with a Ukrainian Gas Company while his father was the nation's Vice President and leading U.S. Foreign Policy Initiatives in the country.

• 57% of the Registered "Independent" Voters polled said it was a scandal for Biden’s son to take the job with the firm Burisma.
• 19% said it wasn’t.
• 52% of the Registered Voters polled said it was inappropriate, while
• 18% said it was appropriate.
• Still, 40% said the Biden-Ukraine affair would not make any difference in their vote.
• 31% said it made them less likely to support him, while
• 8% said it would make them more likely.

Not surprisingly, there’s a partisan divide when it comes to the issue. Republicans and conservatives are more inclined to see Hunter Biden's high-paying position as a scandal, an impropriety of a conflict of interest than Democrats and liberals.

Independents and moderates were somewhere in between.

The issue led to Biden's fiery "You’re a damn liar, man" attack on a local Iowan in December 2019 while he was fighting off the allegations prior to the Iowa Caucuses. Biden has most often objected to press questions about his son’s job, saying it’s a “distraction”.

And during a recent friendly interview on ABC's “The View,” Biden avoided talking much about the issue when hosts brought up Trump’s frequent attacks on son Hunter, whom Trump calls corrupt and mocks for staying out of the public eye.

“Where’s Hunter?” is a favorite refrain of the president, whose campaign sells T-shirts printed with the slogan.

Biden suggested Thursday that he wanted to beat Trump up. “I'd like to be able to be back in high school and just have he and I in a room,” Biden said.

The now-Democrat Party front-runner has previously excused his involvement with the issue, saying he had only a brief conversation with his son about the Burisma job.

However, in testimony during the impeachment proceedings against President Trump, government officials testified they were uneasy about the appearance of a conflict of interest when Hunter Biden worked for Burisma while his father was involved in Ukrainian affairs on behalf of the U.S. government.

• 54% of Registered Voters in the POLITICO/Morning Consult Poll see some type of "Conflict of Interest," while only 16% said there was not.

But voters were divided about how serious it was, with 35% saying it’s a "Conflict of Interest" that should be investigated, and 19% saying it’s a conflict of interest that’s not serious enough to warrant an investigation.

• 32% of Independent Voters say a probe is warranted.
• Independent Voters, whose support can be crucial in a general election, were far more likely to view Hunter Biden’s business dealings as inappropriate, 54% to 12%.
• And by 57% to 15%, Independents said it was a scandal:
  • 28% calling it a “major” scandal, and
  • 27% a “minor” scandal.

The POLITICO/Morning Consult Poll was conducted Feb. 7th-9th, just before the New Hampshire primary. The poll surveyed 1,996 registered voters via online methodology and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2%age points. Morning Consult is a nonpartisan media and technology company that provides data-driven research and insights on politics, policy and business strategy.

More details on the poll and its methodology can be found in these two documents: Toplines and|or Crosstabs.