Classified documents case is starting to become a problem for Biden, poll finds

The number of Democrats who want to see a new nominee increased in the past month, poll finds

Nearly two-thirds of American adults support Congress investigating classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and post-vice presidential office, according to a new poll.

The survey from Yahoo News/YouGov found that 39 per cent of Democrats per cent of Democratic-leaning independents want to see another person be the Democratic nominee for president in 2024, while 38 per cent said they wanted Mr Biden. In December, 46 per cent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents wanted Mr Biden to be the nominee and 37 per cent said “someone else”, marking a drop in support for the incumbent president.

In addition, the number of people who said they were “not sure” about who they wanted as the Democratic nomineee climbed seven points in the past month.

The survey comes as Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the nomination of special counsel Robert Hur to investigate the documents case. The White House has sought to draw a distinction between the documents discovered at Mr Biden’s residence and the documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago. Mr Biden’s team swiftly notified authorities about the documents, while Mr Trump’s lawyers battled with government officials over returning the documents at his home.

Still, some House Republicans, including House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, have said they want to conduct their own investigation of Mr Biden because they do not trust whom the attorney general would appoint.

The survey comes a week after documents from Mr Biden’s tenure as vice president were discovered at his home and his office at the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Each voting group – including 52 per cent of Democrats, 67 per cent of independents and 84 per cent of Republicans – support a congressional investigation. The survey was conducted between 12 January and 16 January and polled 1,538 US adults.

In addition, only 31 per cent of US adults said that the discovery of documents at Mr Biden’s home is “less serious” than the trove of classified documents found at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, while 32 per cent said that the two matters were “equally serious.” But only 21 per cent said that it was “more serious than Trump’s.”