WASHINGTON (AP) — Only about 2 in 10 Americans approve of President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter after previously promising he would do no such thing, a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center shows for Public Affairs Research.
That dissatisfaction echoes the bipartisan uproar in Washington over the president’s about-face. 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 two in 10 people neither agree nor disapprove.
The Democratic president had repeatedly said he would not use his pardon power to benefit his family, and the White House continued to insist, even after Republican Donald Trump’s election victory in November, that Biden’s position had not changed — until suddenly it did. was the case. .
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“I know it’s not right to believe politicians what they say compared to what they do, but he did say explicitly, ‘I will not pardon my son,’” said Peter Prestia, a 59-year-old Republican from Woodland . Park, New Jersey, just west of New York City, who said he strongly disagreed with the measure. “So it’s just the fact that he went back on his word.”
In granting the pardon on December 1, Biden argued that the Justice Department had presided over a “miscarriage of justice” in the prosecution of his son. The president used the same kind of language as Trump to describe the criminal cases against him and his other legal troubles.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it was a decision Biden struggled with but one he made shortly before making the announcement, “because of how politically tainted these cases were” and “because of what his political opponents tried to do. ”
The poll found that about four in 10 Democrats approve of the pardon, while about three in 10 disagree and about a quarter had no opinion or didn’t know enough to say anything about it. The vast majority of Republicans and about half of independents had a negative opinion.
For some, it was easy to see that family was taking precedence over politics.
“Do you have children?” asked Robert Jenkins, a 63-year-old Democrat who runs a lumber yard and gas station in Gallipolis, Ohio. “Are you going to leave your office without pardoning your child? I mean, it’s a no-brainer for me.”
But Prestia, who is semi-retired from a digital marketing conglomerate, said Biden would have been better off not making any promises.
“He has the right to pardon anyone he wants. But he should have just kept his mouth shut, and he did it because it was before the election, so it’s just a blatant lie,” Prestia said.
Despite the unpopularity of his decision, the president’s popularity has not changed significantly since before his party lost the White House to Trump. About four-in-ten Americans “somewhat” or “strongly” approve of how Biden is doing his job as president, which is about where his approval rating has been in the AP-NORC polls since January 2022.
Still, the pardon continues to send political shockwaves, with Republicans and even some top Democrats decrying it.
The poll shows that older adults are more likely than younger people to approve of Biden pardoning his son, although their support is not particularly strong. About a third of people 60 and older approve, compared with about 2 in 10 adults under 60.
The age gap is partly driven by the fact that younger adults are more likely than older adults to say they neither approve nor disapprove of the pardon, or that they don’t know enough to say so.
About 6 in 10 white adults disapprove of the pardon, compared with just under half of Hispanic adults and about 3 in 10 black adults. Relatively large numbers of black and Hispanic Americans — about 3 in 10 — were neutral, the poll found.
“Don’t say you’re going to do something and then back down,” said Trinell Champ, 43, a Democrat from Nederland, Texas, who works in the home health care industry, and said she disapproved of the pardon. “In the end, all you have is your word.”
Champ, who is black, voted for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump. “I just had my hopes up for her, but I wasn’t 100% positive,” she said.
Champ also said she does not approve of Biden’s handling of the presidency and believes the country is on the wrong path. “While he was in office, I felt like I didn’t really see a lot of changes,” she said.
“I just felt like everything just stayed the same,” Champ said.
Overall, however, the pardon did not appear to be a driving factor in many Americans’ assessment of Biden’s job performance. The share of black Americans who approve of the way he is doing his job as president has fallen slightly since October, but it is difficult to gauge what role the pardon has played.
Jenkins is also chairman of the Democratic Party in Gallia County, a heavily Republican area in southeastern Ohio. He said his businesses are not doing well and while he approved of Biden’s handling of the presidency, he believes the country is now on the wrong track.
He said this is partly due to Trump’s victory in the presidential race, but also because Biden made his decision to leave the race in July and back Harris when there was not enough time for a more open primary process that had could lead to a stronger Democratic candidate.
“I know he’s in a place there, but gosh, he ended up on the wrong side,” Jenkins said of Biden. He said that if Biden had stepped aside earlier and a candidate had emerged from fifteen or twenty candidates, “I think we would have won with that.” Who knows?”
Prestia said he does not approve of Biden’s handling of the presidency, but sees the country now on the right track because Trump is returning to the White House.
“Compared to Biden, he means what he says,” Prestia said.
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The poll of 1,251 adults was conducted December 5-9, 2024, using a sample 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 totals plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
