Majority of voters say Hunter Biden’s job at Burisma was ‘inappropriate’: poll

A new poll found a majority of respondents classified former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s job at Burisma as “inappropriate.”

A Politico/Morning Consult poll found 52 percent of participants found the fact that Hunter Biden sat on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma “inappropriate,” compared to 18 percent of people who thought it was appropriate.

A total of 57 percent of registered voters in the survey said his position amounted to a scandal, while 19 percent said it did not. 

Independents, an important group to watch during an election year, found Hunter Biden’s position inappropriate at 54 percent. Fifty-seven percent of independents determined the event to be a scandal, with 28 percent designating it a “major” scandal and 27 percent saying it was a “minor scandal.”

But a plurality of all voters, 40 percent, said Hunter Biden’s position at the company won’t make a difference in whether they will vote for the former vice president to be the Democratic nominee in upcoming contests.

Thirty-one percent said they were less likely to choose Joe Biden, while 8 percent said they were more likely.

Hunter Biden’s position on the board of Burisma was at the center of the impeachment trial that ended in Trump’s acquittal in the Senate. House Democrats alleged that the president, during a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, pressured the leader to open investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s dealings in the country in exchange for about $400 million in military aid. 

Hunter Biden took the Burisma position in 2014 while Joe Biden served as vice president during the Obama administration. At the time, the former vice president pushed to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma while his son sat on the board for failure to work on anti-corruption efforts. The E.U. joined the former vice president in this push as well. 

There is no evidence that has surfaced to suggest that Hunter Biden or Joe Biden broke any laws. 

A majority of voters surveyed in the poll, 54 percent, thought there was a conflict of interest in the situation and 16 percent said they believed there wasn’t one.

Thirty-five percent of respondents said the events should have been investigated, while 19 percent didn’t think they warranted investigation. 

Participants fell along party lines when asked is they approved of an investigation into the matter. Sixty-three percent of Republicans approved of an investigation, compared to 11 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of independents.

Thirty-one percent of Democrats said there was no conflict of interest, compared to 11 percent of independents and 4 percent of Republicans who said the same. 

The poll surveyed 1,996 registered voters online between Feb. 7 and 9, before the New Hampshire primary. The margin of error was 2 percentage points.