Country Divided Over Election Hacking

A country divided over their new President is also divided over how he is handling his move into the White House and concern over whether foreign hacking had a hand in that move.

According to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 50% of Americans say they approve of how President-elect is handling the transition, while 41% says they are not.

In a similar poll in 2008, Barack Obama got a 73% approval score and Bill Clinton's was 77%. There was no comparable for George W. Bush because the poll was taken before the recount.

Broken down by party, 82% of Republicans approve of the Trump transition, or the TRUMP (all caps), transition, as the team puts it in e-mails, while only 12% of Democrats approve. A small majority of independents (within the margin of error) approve (53%).

More than half of those polled (55%) say they are "significantly bothered" by reports that foreign hackers (Russia) tried to influence the election. The CIA and FBI are now in general agreement on that point, although the Trump transition team and candidate have been saying it is a media narrative to de-legitimize the election and that the election losers need to move on.

Only 23% say they are not bothered at all.

There is a partisan divide over the hack. A vast majority (a combined 86%) of Democrats say they are either "a great deal" or "quite a bit" concerned by the hack, while only 29% of Republicans say the same.

The phone poll was conducted Dec. 12-15 of 1,000 adults. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.