Fewer than half of registered voters say special counsel Robert Mueller should testify before Congress to discuss his report on Russian election interference, according to a new poll.
In a Hill-HarrisX survey released Monday, 42 percent of respondents said they were interested in hearing more from Mueller by having him testify before Congress. Thirty-six percent said Congress should move on to other issues, while 23 percent said they don’t care about the Mueller report.
After Attorney General William Barr last month released a redacted version of Mueller’s final report, Democratic lawmakers have called on him to release the full document to Congress. Barr instead allowed 12 members of Congress — six Democrats and six Republicans — to view a less-redacted version in a secure facility, though very few lawmakers took him up on his offer.
The White House later claimed executive privilege over the full version.
Democratic lawmakers are now seeking to have Mueller testify before Congress about his investigation and its findings. President Trump said this month that Barr should decide whether Mueller testifies.
In the poll, respondents’ opinions were divided along partisan lines, with 62 percent of Republicans saying it was time to move on, while 66 percent of Democrats said they wanted to hear more from Mueller.
Nineteen percent of GOP respondents and 17 percent of Democratic ones said they did not care about the Mueller report.
Respondents who identified as independents were almost evenly divided between wanting Mueller to testify (38 percent), wanting to move on (32 percent) and saying they weren’t interested in the report (30 percent).
“The Mueller report is really something that continues to be broken down based on partisan lines so it’s the Democrats that want to continue the investigation,” Mallory Newall, director of research at Ipsos Public Affairs, told Hill.TV. “People that identify as Republicans really don’t want to re-litigate everything.”
“One in four Americans, including 30 percent of independents, just don’t care. They don’t care about it. It’s not something that’s relevant to their daily lives,” she added.
Thirty-five percent of respondents between ages 35 and 49 said they did not care about the special counsel’s report, a view shared by 25 percent of voters under the age of 35.
By contrast, just 15 percent of voters 50 and older said they did not care about Mueller’s findings.
The survey was conducted May 17-18 online from a statistically representative panel of 1,030 registered voters. The poll has a 3.1 percentage points sampling margin of error with a 95 percent confidence level.
—Matthew Sheffield
Updated at 3:35 p.m.
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