hillary clinton and president obama are outraged about the f.b.i. director james comey<u+2019>s decision to disclose further inquiries into her handling of confidential email, but are the american people? although numerous prosecutors and former department of justice officials have accused mr. comey of violating formal guidelines and informal norms against commenting on continuing investigations or publicizing political cases just before elections, voters do not seem to share their indignation. in an online morning consult poll of approximately 3,200 registered voters, only 19 percent agreed with the statement that prosecutors should wait until after election day to make announcements about investigations concerning political figures or elected officials. instead , 60 percent agreed that prosecutors should be able to make announcements about investigations concerning political figures or elected officials close to election day even if it might affect the election. (another 21 percent said they don<u+2019>t know or had no opinion.) not surprisingly, these results differ along partisan lines. democrats were five times more likely than republicans to say prosecutors should wait to make announcements about political figures (33 percent versus 6 percent). conversely, people who identified as republicans were much more likely than democrats to endorse the idea of announcing cases before elections (79 percent versus 47 percent). to understand the extent to which partisanship affects people<u+2019>s opinions on the issue, morning consult asked the same question to three randomly selected groups. the first group saw a generic statement without reference to mrs. clinton or donald j. trump, which yielded the results described above. other groups were prompted with either a statement about the f.b.i. inquiry into mrs. clinton or one about the new york attorney general<u+2019>s investigation into the practices of mr. trump<u+2019>s foundation. when the investigation into mrs. clinton was mentioned before the question, partisans differed by almost 50 percentage points in their attitude toward pre-election disclosures, which were endorsed by 83 percent of republicans but just 34 percent of democrats <u+2014> an even larger gap than observed with the generic prompt. by contrast, mentioning mr. trump<u+2019>s foundation eliminated the gap between the parties in support for publicizing investigations, which was backed by 57 percent of democrats and 58 percent of republicans. the lesson from these findings is clear: the public wants to know everything it can about the candidates in advance, especially if they are from the other party. kyle dropp is co-founder and chief research officer of morning consult. follow him on twitter at @kyledropp . brendan nyhan is a professor of government at dartmouth college. follow him on twitter at @brendannyhan . the upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. follow us on facebook and twitter . sign up for our newsletter.
where<u+2019>s outrage over f.b.i. disclosure? not among voters
kyle dropp and brendan nyhan