Most Republicans Are Birthers?

I've been hearing off and on about the whole "is Obama a natural born citizen" thing...though I hadn't followed the 'birther' tag attached to it. I'm also curious and doubtful about the poll results... my father's a much bigger conservative than I am, and much more against Obama's policies but he hasn't uttered a word about his citizenship to me, nor have any of my relatives or friends. Just like the truther conspiracies... I've yet to hear the "birther" thing thrown around outside of the internet, and this is my first time encountering that whole debate in this context...

Hopefully it's an affliction to the radical nut bars... because I sure as hell don't want that label. IMO if his natural born stature were a problem it should have been sorted before he became a presidential candidate, not after he was elected into office. I personally don't care about the rest.
 
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Personally I've seen so much partisan politics that when I hear "Obama is a citizen" I tend to think liberals while "No he isn't" tends to be conservatives. I wonder if it's just not more partisan tit for tat thing, trying to get back at Obama for the liberals who refuse to believe Bush won the election fair and square against Bush.

People need to grow up.
 
UNLoVedRebel said:
Was this a random sample? Sure doesn't look like it.
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Details of the methodology are here.

Methodology

DKOS WEEKLY NATIONAL POLL 2009

The Daily Kos weekly National Poll was conducted by Research 2000 July 27 through July 30, 2009. A total of 2400 adults nationally were interviewed by telephone. A cross-section of calls was made into each state in the country in order to reflect the adult population nationally.

The margin for error, according to standards customarily used by statisticians, is no more than plus or minus 2% percentage points. This means that there is a 95 percent probability that the "true" figure would fall within that range if the entire adult population were sampled. The margin for error is higher for any demographic subgroup, such as gender, race, or region.​

Are Research 2000 notoriously unreliable?
 
thaiboxerken said:
Southerners are generally stupid. I know this because I've lived there and visited ther many times. It's not to say that there aren't smart people there, however, this is an area of the country where the majority of people still believe that skin color plays a factor in competency and intelligence. I don't know why, but the southern culture is one that promotes ignorance and superstition.
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Oh, but what they've done for literature!
 
Piggy said:
It comes from "Daily KOs", or "Daily Knock-Outs" -- the site was intended to deliver knock-out punches to the conservatives.
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I don't think so. Linky.

"Kos" is the US-Army/screen nickname of the founder of Daily Kos, Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zúniga. (See also the in-progress dkospedia entry Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, and the Wikipedia pages Kos and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga.)
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Original bold.
 
Piggy said:
A failed Republican Party will inevitably result in worse government from the ruling Democrats for two reasons.

First, it will increase the incidence of group-think, scandal, and corruption among the power party. (As it always does.)

Second, with the Democrats divided as they are, and will continue to be, among liberals, moderates, and blue dogs, coalitions will have to be made with Republican senators and congressmen -- and the more extreme and fringe-based those folks are, the worse those compromises will be.

Democrats should not applaud the implosion of the GOP.
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I agree. Unchecked power inexorably leads to corruption. The Dems and the USA needs a reasonable, issue-based GOP. The birthers, deathers and similar utter cow patties ultimately harm us all.
 
LightinDarkness said:
Dr Adequate said:
An ... interesting ... conjecture, but it wouldn't explain why one CT got so much more play than the other before the election. Where were the McCain birthers then?
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All over the internet.
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OK, let's have a look at Google Trends.

mccainobama.png


The red line is for the words "Obama" and "certificate", the blue line for "McCain" and "Panama".
 
I'd be careful about reading too much into these results without more independent polling. I seem to recall seeing another poll on this issue in which only 28% of Republicans bought the birther nonsense.

I'll do some digging.

ETA: Never mind, we were both talking about the same poll, apparently. When taking into account the Republicans "not sure" about Obama's citizenship, the numbers come out to 58%

That's pretty damn spooky.

But I'd still like to see some other independent polling on this before I continue work on my bomb shelter.
 
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MattusMaximus said:
But I'd still like to see some other independent polling on this before I continue work on my bomb shelter.
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I read that the Kos poll has spurred other pollsters into asking similar questions. I can't remember where I read this, sorry. But if it's true, we should see some answers next week.
 
Dr Adequate said:
I read that the Kos poll has spurred other pollsters into asking similar questions. I can't remember where I read this, sorry. But if it's true, we should see some answers next week.
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Good, because I am loathe to trust one poll. Thanks for the heads up.
 
Slight derail...

More trouble ahead for the GOP. It seems that during the August recess the birthers are planning on, as I predicted, going after Republican Congress-critters when they appear in public forums...

GOP headache: The birther issue
As GOP Rep. Mike Castle learned the hard way back home in Delaware this month, there’s no easy way to deal with the small but vocal crowd of right-wing activists who refuse to believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

At a town hall meeting in Georgetown, a woman demanded to know why Castle and his colleagues were “ignoring” questions about Obama’s birth certificate — questions that have been put to rest repeatedly by state officials in Hawaii, where the birth certificate and all other credible evidence show that Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961.

When Castle countered that Obama is, in fact, “a citizen of the United States,” the crowd erupted in boos, the woman seized control of the gathering and led a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. The video went viral; by Sunday, it had been viewed on YouTube more than half a million times.

And birthers say members should expect more of the same in the coming weeks.
“Absolutely,” says California resident Orly Taitz, the Russian-born attorney/dentist who has become a kind of ringleader for the movement. “It is a very important issue, one that politicians should have taken up a long time ago.”

Moments after speaking with POLITICO Saturday, Taitz posted a call to arms on her blog:

“I believe it is a serious concern and I hope that each and every decent American comes to town hall meetings with a video camera and demands action,” she wrote.
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Wow, this is going to be interesting. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion...
 
Dr Adequate said:
Second, the question asked was not: "Is Obama eligible to be President?" but "Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?".
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That's the big issue I've seen regarding the whole 'birther' nonsense. People who ought to know better are saying "I dis/believe X..." as if it isn't a question of fact but of opinion.

I can see why you offered that up here in Conspiracy Theories because that's exactly what CT'rs do. Either UBL and al-Qaeda staged the 9/11 attacks or they didn't. Either the Nazi regime engaged in genocide against the Jews or it didn't. Either the Apollo programme put people on the moon in 1969 or it didn't.

I suppose the media would have to report on real stories if they dropped this one.
 
Wow. Dang.

This issue at this time is well-worthy of good study and I think it will get that. My guess is this poll, being run by Dem politico activits types, is spun a bit towards the upside. But I suspect when closer study is done, we'll see something disturbingly close to these numbers- say 66-90%. OOMA. It's a big enough phenom I think it'll go in the history books when they talk about the first black president.

Two things are disturbing - the number of no votes, tgose who flat believe he was born outside the U.S., and the number of unsures. Considering there's no actual evidence for something that's convinced something like one quarter of GoP voters... One must wonder what is going trough the minds of the not sures.

If you haven't heard of the controversy and had a basic education about presidential requirements, you'd most wisely presume no problem since he's president.

Presuming you're aware of the issue a concerned citizen would want to know yes or no. There are two ways to decide this - to do some research and some thinking and then to decide, or to decide without the above. They've had time to figure it out... some concerned citizens.

It's almost as if they're waiting to decide to see how things pan out first. Will the South finally rise again against the Kenyan imposter? If so then some of that app. 30% will suddenly decide on no. Major hyperbole I know, but still...

Anyway, Dr. A, a well-put observation. I think we need to look at the scale of this and that middle category is indeed suspect. The question mark in the title is the only thing you needed to be spot-on here.
:wave1
 
Originally intended for other thread,but better for this:

Dr Adequate said:
I've started a thread on this.

The methodology is given here:

Methodology

DKOS WEEKLY NATIONAL POLL 2009

The Daily Kos weekly National Poll was conducted by Research 2000 July 27 through July 30, 2009. A total of 2400 adults nationally were interviewed by telephone. A cross-section of calls was made into each state in the country in order to reflect the adult population nationally.

The margin for error, according to standards customarily used by statisticians, is no more than plus or minus 2% percentage points. This means that there is a 95 percent probability that the "true" figure would fall within that range if the entire adult population were sampled. The margin for error is higher for any demographic subgroup, such as gender, race, or region. ​
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Quite well writen methodology.Only few more things were missing,but otherwise sufficent. (I am missing how the called got on list-registration or other means ; the distribution of education)

Second thought: I would set aside "not sure",because it could be suprise for asked.(Don't know how spread is knowledge about "issue")

Third:Are there any other polls about this?
Fourth: Why I have such questions? I have seen polls in my country to vary greatly only by selection of people... So I doubt nobody does it in USA as well.

Some of this has been answered,but nothing definite yet...
 
Dr Adequate said:
Kritikos said:
Dr. A., how did you derive the figures for the pie charts?
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I didn't, I took them off the Daily Kos website.
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Where, please? They are not on the first page that you cite, or on the other page with the detailed information. As I said, the Kos pages say what percentage in the South or among Republicans answered "no," but not what percentage of those who answered "no" are in the South or are Republicans, which are what your pie charts concern.
Piggy said:
Dr Adequate said:
Golly, they're keen on this stuff in the South, aren't they? I wonder why.
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Because, my friend -- and I say this as an impeccably pedigreed Southerner -- we're a bunch of ******* hicks.

I wish it boiled down to something other than that, but it doesn't.

The South, on the whole, is undereducated, superstitious, steeped in fundamentalist religion, short on critical thinking skills, and in the case of working class whites also highly suspicious of blacks, "liberals", and "elites" (that's 3 strikes for Obama), and therefore easily swayed by the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

I have a good friend who teaches high school science in a relatively well-to-do district in the neighboring county, and every year he has to deal with students who insist the moon landing was faked.

Plain and simple, we're gullible rednecks.
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That sounds more plausible to me than just saying that they're "stupid," though the effects of having too little education and too much religion look a lot like stupidity.
 
Are there corresponding polls from the Bush era about the number of people who thought he stole the election? I would be interested to know whether the Birthers have eclipsed that CT.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Southerners are generally stupid. I know this because I've lived there and visited ther many times. It's not to say that there aren't smart people there, however, this is an area of the country where the majority of people still believe that skin color plays a factor in competency and intelligence. I don't know why, but the southern culture is one that promotes ignorance and superstition.
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I demand an immediate apology for that cowardly slur, sir, or there shall be consequences. :duel:

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