PPP national "birther"/"truther" poll

[Update (6/30/10): Serious questions have been raised about the validity of Research 2000's polls. The results discussed below should thus be viewed as potentially suspect until the matter is resolved.]

Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling continues his interesting polling on political misperceptions in a new national poll (PDF) that was conducted Sept. 18-21 and released today.

As in the New Jersey poll released last week, PPP's national poll includes contrasting "truther" and "birther" questions. However, Jensen consulted with me on the wording of the "truther" question, which I had criticized, and ended up selecting new wording I adapted from a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. The new question removes the ambiguity associated with the phrase "advance knowledge," which could be interpreted to refer to the August 2001 memo Bush received warning of the threat from Al Qaeda:

Old question: "Do you think George W. Bush had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks?"

New question: "Do you think President Bush intentionally allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place because he wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?"

Here are the poll results for the two misperceptions by party:

The primary finding is that the Obama birth certificate misperception has become far more prevalent among Republicans (42% no, 22% not sure) than the 9/11 misperception for Democrats (25% yes, 12% not sure). The percentage of Republicans who directly endorse the myth has increased substantially since the Daily Kos poll released in late July (which found 28% of Republicans said Obama wasn't born in this country and 30% weren't sure).

In terms of the 9/11 myth, the PPP results are generally consistent with what Scripps found in 2006, though reported levels of 9/11 misperceptions are lower among Democrats* (note: the Scripps results are juxtaposed below with the Daily Kos poll results referenced above):

The difference in 9/11 misperceptions between the two polls could be the result of variations in question wording (among other things, the original Scripps question refers to "people in the federal government" rather than President Bush) or differences in the response options (yes/no versus a scale of likelihood). 9/11 misperceptions may also have declined over time, particularly since Bush is no longer in office.

(Cross-posted to Pollster.com)

Comments

[Rob]

Interesting that more than 20% of Democrats answer yes or not sure to the question of whether Obama was born in the United States. BTW, this 2006 biography of Obama may have some bearing on the question.

[Rob]

Other interesting findings: 34% of Republicans answer yes or not sure to the question of whether Obama is the anti-Christ; 25% of Democrats answer yes or not sure to the question whether Bush is the anti-Christ. Okay, that's weird, but perhaps to be expected. But 11% of Democrats answer yes or not sure to whether Obama is the anti-Christ!

For the question of whether Bush intentionally allowed the 9/11 attacks, 54% of African-Americans answered yes or not sure. Wow. Just wow.

[David]

I don't want to believe that almost 20% of Americans think Bush intentionally allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place. So I'm stretching for some way to discount the poll results:

The revised wording is a big improvement but perhaps the question was still misunderstood by some. To me, "Bush intentionally allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place" means Bush had specific knowledge regarding the nature of the 9/11 attacks and the approximate date they were set for; also he had the means to thwart these attacks but he chose to let the attacks take place.

I would like to beleive that some poll respondants understood the question merely to mean that Bush was generally less diligent than he ought to have been because an attack could be used as a reason for us to go to war in the Middle East.

Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, based on my unwillingness to think so badly of my fellow citizens. Still, it could be instructive if some pollster went into greater detail to find out what respondants thought the question meant.

[JP]

In retrospect I think it would be fair to compare 9/11 truth as polled in 2005 (release of the loose change video) to Obama birther polls taken now. -OR- what is very possible. 9/11 truth as polled in 2006 as done by Scripps versus Obama birther polls taken next year in 2010.