Few believe Edward Snowden is a hero for revealing that the federal government had innocent Americans under surveillance, according to a Rasmussen poll.
In the poll:
- 15 percent of likely voters believe Snowden is a hero.
- 30 percent say he is a traitor who endangered lives.
- 48 percent believe he is somewhere between a whistleblower and traitor.
Snowden, a former CIA contractor who is accused of violating the Espionage Act, now lives in Moscow, and he has made his case that President Barack Obama should pardon him. Snowden said that citizens have benefited from his actions.
However, only 25 percent of voters in the poll believe he should be pardoned. Others believe:
- 43 percent say he should be tried for treason if he returns to the U.S.
- 32 percent have not decided.
The amount of voters who believe he should be prosecuted depends on their opinion of him, the poll results showed:
- 85 percent of those who believe he is a traitor say he should be prosecuted.
- 13 percent of those who say he is a hero believe that.
- 29 percent of those who believe he's somewhere in between believe he should be prosecuted.
Voters are more certain about Snowden now than in 2013. In a poll from that time:
- 12 percent believed he was a hero.
- 21 percent believed he was a traitor.
- 34 percent believed he was in between.
- 29 percent said it was too early to tell.
Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan believes Snowden should be pardoned.
"Snowden did an important—and brave—service for the American public," she wrote.
Members of the House Intelligence Committee did not agree, and said in a letter to Obama that Snowden's leaking of stolen records was "perhaps the largest and most damaging public disclosure of classified information in our nation's history."
Rasmussen conducted the poll of a thousand likely voters on Sept. 20 and 21.