Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

Poll(s) of the week

It has been nearly two weeks since Attorney General William Barr sent Congress his four-page summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. And while the full 300-plus page report hasn’t been released (Barr has pledged to release a redacted version of it by mid-April), enough polls have trickled in to give us an initial look at how the public has reacted to what we know so far.

The verdict is still out on whether Americans believe the report has cleared President Trump of any wrongdoing. Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report said that the investigation did not conclude that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, and said that although Mueller had not charged the president with obstruction of justice, the special counsel wrote that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” And — perhaps unsurprisingly, given the ambiguity of Barr’s summary — Americans have revealed mixed opinions in polls conducted after Mueller’s investigation concluded. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 40 percent said they think Barr’s summary of the report has not cleared the president’s name, while 29 percent said it did clear him and 31 percent were unsure. About a third of Americans said it was “too soon” to say whether the president had been cleared, in a CBS News poll; another third said he had been cleared, and about a quarter said he had not been. And a CNN poll that didn’t give respondents an option to say they were still undecided found that a majority of Americans (56 percent) did not think that Trump and his campaign had been exonerated, while 43 percent thought they had been.

However, there was a strong partisan split in how Americans answered. In that CBS News poll, 68 percent of Republicans thought that the report had cleared Trump’s name while only 9 percent of Democrats thought the same.The CNN poll also found a wide partisan split. But while Americans are still unsure how to react to Mueller’s investigation now that it has ended, one clear trend has emerged: Republicans, who were taking a more and more negative view of the special counsel, now have a more favorable opinion of Mueller. On the other hand, polls show fewer Democrats have a favorable opinion of Mueller.

Some of the shift in public opinion has been quite dramatic. For example, a Washington Post/Schar School poll conducted in February and then again the week after the investigation concluded found that the share of Republicans who approved of how Mueller handled the investigation went up by 25 percentage points, from 21 percent to 46 percent, whereas the percentage of Democrats who approved of Mueller’s work went down by 15 percentage points, from 77 percent in February to 62 percent in March. In the six polls that asked people whether they had a favorable or unfavorable view of Mueller in the past two weeks, we found a similar trend.

At this stage, there is evidence that Americans’ opinion of Mueller and the investigation is changing, especially within political parties. But many people seem to be waiting for more information before they make up their minds as to whether Trump has been cleared. But the one thing the polls are certain about is that an overwhelming majority of Americans want the full report to be made public.



Frustrations over attorney general’s summary of Mueller report: The Washington Post

Other polling nuggets

Trump Approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker, 42.1 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 52.6 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -10.5 points). At this time last week, 41.9 percent approved and 52.8 percent disapproved (for a net approval rating of -10.9 points). One month ago, Trump had an approval rating of 42.1 percent and a disapproval rating of 53.4 percent, for a net approval rating of -11.3 points.

Check out all the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections.