4 in 10 Republican voters approve of Jan. 6 panel, survey finds

The Hill
·3 min read
The Jan. 6 House Select Committee holds a business meeting on Wednesday, December 1, 2021 to consider Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official in the Trump administration, in contempt of Congress.
The Jan. 6 House Select Committee holds a business meeting on Wednesday, December 1, 2021 to consider Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official in the Trump administration, in contempt of Congress.


Roughly 40 percent of Republicans in a new survey said they approve of the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

According to the Politico-Morning Consult poll released on Sunday, 40 percent of Republicans said they either strongly support or somewhat support the Jan. 6 select committee. Another 44 percent said they oppose the committee to some degree while the remaining 16 percent said they had no opinion on it.

Among Democrats, 82 percent said they supported the committee, 12 percent said the opposed it and 6 percent had no opinion. A majority of independents also said they supported the Jan. 6 panel, with 58 percent supporting and 27 percent opposing the commission.

The House committee maintained a majority of support across all surveyed age groups, genders, religions, income levels and education. Overall, 61 percent of registered voters said they supported the House select committee and 26 percent said they opposed it.

However, Politico noted that the committee lost favor when it was pointed out that members had been nominated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). When the question was rephrased to include Pelosi, only 46 percent of registered voters said they supported the panel. Among Republicans, support for the committee fell to 16 percent and among Democrats it fell to 76 percent.

The Politico-Morning Consult poll also asked participants how they would characterize the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Among all registered voters, 62 percent said the Jan. 6 rioters were supporters of former President Trump, 14 percent they were opponents of Trump and 24 percent had no opinion.

Eighty percent of surveyed Democrats characterized the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters as Trump supporters while 43 percent of Republicans said the same. Sixty percent of independents said the rioters were Trump supporters.

When asked how responsible they believed Republicans in Congress were for what occurred on Jan. 6, 47 percent said they were somewhat or very responsible while 35 percent said the same for Democrats in Congress.

Fifty-nine percent of registered voters said Trump was responsible to some degree for the events that led up to the Jan. 6 attack.

Respondents to the survey held the media equally responsible for the events of Jan. 6, though a lower degree said they felt it was "very responsible" when compared to Trump. However, a higher degree of survey participants - 66 percent - said social media companies were responsible.

The one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack falls on Thursday of this week. Trump has announced plans of holding a press conference on that day, where he has said he plans on going over the "points" that support his baseless claim that President Biden's win in the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent.

Another poll released over the weekend found that one in three Americans said it could sometimes be "justified for citizens to take violent action against the government," up significantly from previous years.

The poll from The Washington Post-University of Maryland found that 40 percent of Republicans said violent actions could be justified, compared to 23 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of independents.

The Politico-Morning Consult poll was conducted from Dec. 18-20 and included a sample of 2,000 registered voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.