Most Americans reject Trump's e-mail call

July 28, 2016, 1:28 PM GMT+0

54% of Americans say Trump's call for Russia to hack Clinton's e-mails was inappropriate, and 40% think he is too friendly towards Russia

Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of calling on Russian intelligence services to uncover the 30,000 missing e-mails that had been deleted from Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server. The call comes after Russian intelligence has been widely implicated in the recent hacking of the Democratic National Committee's e-mails.

YouGov's latest research shows that Americans (54%) regard this call for a foreign power to intervene in an election as inappropriate. Only 30% say that it was an appropriate thing for Donald Trump to call for, but this conceals a significant partisan divide, as 61% of Republicans thought it was acceptable and 80% of Democrats thought it was unacceptable.

Throughout the campaign Trump has made positive comments about Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. The favor has been returned as Russian state media has tended towards favorable coverage of the Republican candidate in state media.

Overall, 40% of Americans think that Trump is too friendly towards Russia, while 27% think that his current stance is about right. Again, Democrats (62%) are much more likely than Republicans (14%) to view him as too friendly towards Russia.

Full results of the YouGov live survey can be found here.