Most Think Media Hid Hunter Biden Story Before Election Day

Most voters suspect the news media buried the Hunter Biden story until after the election and think there’s a good chance that new President Biden was involved in his son’s overseas dealings.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters think many news organizations ignored the Hunter Biden story to help his father’s presidential campaign. Thirty-two percent (32%) disagree and say they ignored it because they felt it was a partisan hit job. Seventeen percent (17%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.) 

Fifty-six percent (56%) believe it is likely Joe Biden was consulted about and perhaps profited from his son’s overseas business deals including at least one involving a company in mainland China. This includes 43% who say it’s Very Likely. This is little changed from late October. Thirty-eight percent (38%) still consider this connection unlikely, with 22% who say it’s Not At All Likely.

Now that Hunter Biden has acknowledged publicly that he is under criminal investigation for tax evasion, many major news organizations like the New York Times and CNN are covering his questionable overseas business dealings, first reported several weeks before Election Day by the New York Post.

Seventy percent (70%) of voters say they have been closely following news reports about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, with 38% who have been following Very Closely.

Among those who have been following Very Closely, 76% say the media deliberately ignored the story before Election Day to help Joe Biden, and 72% think the president-elect is likely to have been consulted about and perhaps profited from his son’s overseas dealings.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted December 13-14, 2020 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.

Seventy-five percent (75%) of Republicans and a plurality (47%) of voters not affiliated with either major party expected the media to try to help Biden more than President Trump during the campaign. Only 29% of Democrats agreed.

Republicans have been following the Hunter Biden story more closely than Democrats and unaffiliated voters. Seventy-eight percent (78%) of Republicans think the media deliberately hid the story until after Election Day, a view shared by 32% of Democrats and 46% of voters not affiliated with either major political party.

GOP voters (73%) are far more likely than Democrats (21%) and unaffiliateds (36%) to consider it Very Likely that Joe Biden was consulted about and perhaps profited from his son’s overseas business deals.

Men feel more strongly than women that the media ignored the Hunter Biden story to help Joe Biden’s election chances. The older the voter, the more likely they are to think Joe Biden was involved in his son’s dealings.

Blacks have been following the story less than whites and other minority voters and are less suspicious of both the media and Joe Biden himself.

During the presidential campaign, voters were more suspicious of Trump’s ethics than those of Biden.

Voters said in mid-September that the media was a lot more interested in selling Biden’s positions than it was in Trump’s. Controversy was the key when it comes to media coverage of Trump, they said.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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