A deeper look at the birthers (new polling)

[brooklynite]

from Public Policy Polling

After we conducted polls over the last couple of weeks finding significant numbers of 'birthers' in North Carolina and Virginia, we decided to take the question national but also drum down more specifically on where exactly the people who think Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States do think he's from.

The answer is that 62% of Americans think Obama was born here, while 24% think he was not and 14% are unsure.

10% of the country thinks that he was born in Indonesia, 7% think he was born in Kenya, and 1% think he was born in the Philippines.

That leaves 20%, which includes at least some people who correctly believe that Obama was born in Hawaii, but who don't consider Hawaii to be part of the United States. You read that right- 6% of poll respondents think that Hawaii is not part of the country and 4% are unsure.

I'm not sure which part is scarier...

[CakeGrrl]

1. Arne Duncan has his work cut out for him

Ignorance is dangerous.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Arne Duncan is one of the last people I would trust to fix it.

[Old Codger]

2. Some of it

Bothers me also that they don't understand that even if he was born in Indonesia to American citizens he is still and American citizen....they don't understand that by their criteria McAin is not a citizen either since he was born in Panama.

[leftynyc]

5. Actually, no

there was a law on the books that made his mother not old enough to bestow natural born citizenship (I'm doing this from memory but she would have had to be 19 and she was a few months shy of that when Pres Obama was born). He would have had to been born in Hawaii (or somewhere in the US) which is okay because he was.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Could be worse: some polling could claim he was the product of an extraterrestrial marriage.

A Vulcan walks amongst us . . .

[quantass]

4. The Media is to blame (again) -- If this was the Primaries we all know they would've flogged this

thing to high heaven (David Gregory: "Is Obama really from Indonesia? You be the judge...next on this extended edition of Meet the Press").

Sure there are morons who believe this silliness but it is the media that keeps reinforcing it, over and over. First the misinformation gets out there usually by the republicans making it up but then the media picks it up and repeats it ad nausea and invites republicans ONLY to tell their talking points with no followup questions that refute the claim...new polls come that show no effect and the media wont report it...other new polls come out that same day showing lower values due to this negative spin and the news cycle will be talked endlessly about how the lie (or rather: "new truth") is hurting since the polls are reflecting it.

Good lord how this would have been an endless talk on the airs abotu where is Obama from with the birthers and such.

Thank goodness for Media Matters who took it upon themselves to do some work to say this is bullshit.

[frylock]

6. 24% huh?

hmmmmmnn...