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POLITICS

71% Think IRS Likely to Have Destroyed E-mails to Hide Guilt

Most voters think it’s likely the IRS deliberately destroyed e-mails about its investigations of Tea Party and other conservative groups to hide its criminal behavior. Two-out-of-three now believe IRS employees involved in these investigations should be jailed or fired, and most suspect the agency of targeting other political opponents of the Obama administration.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 53% of Likely U.S. Voters believe that the Internal Revenue Service broke the law when it targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups.  That’s up from 49% earlier this year and back to the level seen last September. Little changed from the early surveys are the 22% who think the IRS did not break the law. Slightly more (25%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on June 26-27, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

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