Fox Poll: Most Believe IRS Targeting Was Intentional

A Fox News poll released Wednesday finds an overwhelming amount of Americans believe the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service was a willful act designed to punish political opponents.

Sixty-six percent of American voters said the move was orchestrated by high-echelon members of the IRS as opposed to 23 percent who believe the situation was created through the mistakes of lower-level employees.

The Obama administration did not fare so well in the poll.

Forty percent said they believed the administration knew what the IRS was doing, while 28 percent said it was directly involved in the targeting.

Twenty-four percent said they believed Obama had nothing to do with the actions of the IRS.

Eleven percent of those polled who identified themselves as members of the Tea Party said the White House’s hands were clean.

On the subject of whether or not Congress should continue to investigate the IRS, the numbers spoke loudly and stretched across party lines.

Seventy-eight percent said the investigation should continue, with 90 percent of Republicans, 76 percent of independents and 69 percent of Democrats all agreeing on that particular point.

The scandal has also affected how Americans feel about the IRS being in charge of implementing Obamacare.

Seventy-six percent think another agency should be put in place, with the breakdown being 87 percent of Republicans, 72 percent of independents and 69 percent of Democrats believing the IRS has to go.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,019 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from June 9 to June 11.

The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.