Poll of Republicans Met With Shock, Skepticism

(Feb. 3) -- Most Republicans think Barack Obama is a socialist and Sarah Palin is more qualified than him to be president. Most either think Obama wasn't born in the U.S. or aren't sure. Nearly 40 percent want him impeached. Those are a few of the results in a Daily Kos poll that's shaking up the blogosphere.

The liberal Web site commissioned Research 2000 to survey more than 2,000 self-identified Republicans last month. Site founder Markos Moulitsas -- the "Kos" in Daily Kos -- called the results "nothing short of startling."

A few more nuggets from the poll:

• 21 percent believe the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) stole the 2008 election and 55 percent aren't sure.
• 31 percent believe Obama is a racist who hates white people and 33 percent aren't sure.
• 23 percent want their state to secede from the U.S. and 19 percent aren't sure.
• Only 26 percent favor letting openly gay Americans serve in the military.
• 67 percent believe the only way to get to heaven is through Jesus Christ.

On his blog, Politico's Ben Smith said the poll was conducted "more or less with the goal of making Republicans look extreme" and "does a pretty good job of that." Daily Kos responded Wednesday, "Actually, the poll just asked questions of self-identified Republicans. The answers made Republicans look extreme."

"If this poll is accurate (and Research 2000 has a good reputation for accuracy), the Republican base has an absurdly high percentage of wackos of all stripes, from religious fanatics to creationists to secessionists to conspiracy theorists," said Charles Johnson on Little Green Footballs.

Other commentators were more skeptical.

"One has to wonder if Republicans really believe that Obama stole the election, was born in Kenya and that all non-Christians are going to hell," noted Matt Sussman, Technorati politics channel editor. "Granted, several of the questions are loaded, and Kos himself may be reading too much into the 'undecided' pool, but the results are nonetheless startling."

What's missing from the research is context, Darren Lenard Hutchinson observed on his blog Dissenting Justice. "It does not provide comparative results for self-identified Democrats and Independents. So, while Kos and many Daily Kos readers believe that the poll proves the extremism among Republicans, it is difficult to make this conclusion without comparative data," he said.

Hutchinson and Moderate Voice's David Adesnik both pointed out that the Kos poll's results on questions about same-sex marriage and gays in the military were far different from those from recent Gallup and Pew surveys.

"But unless you have evidence that something is actually wrong with the poll, what can you possibly say? You can be suspicious of Kos, but that's not an argument," Adesnik conceded.

Newsweek's Katie Connolly wondered whether the sampling of participants was skewed. (Click to see details on survey sample.) For example, 83 percent of those polled said they were likely to vote this November. That number was "remarkably high -- and odd," Connolly said. It's usually no more than 60 percent in other surveys. Also, 37 percent of those polled were over 60, and only 9 percent were under 30.

"That's a pretty big split. It's no secret that older voters are a lot more conservative on most of these issues and aren't big fans of the president, and their views may be overstated here," Connolly suggested on the Gaggle blog.

But demographic categories might not mean much when it comes to GOP voters. Polling guru Nate Silver was struck by the fact that on nearly every question, "the results showed essentially no difference based on age, gender, race or geography -- once we've established that you're a Republican, these differences seem to be rendered moot." The GOP base appears to be "the same pretty much everywhere" -- which will be the party's greatest strength and greatest liability going into the midterm elections, Silver predicted on his blog FiveThirtyEight.

NewsBusters' Scott Whitlock slammed MSNBC's David Shuster for using the poll to declare that most Republicans are "birthers" who think Obama isn't really an American citizen.

"So, one poll, by a left-wing website (in conjunction with the firm Research 2000), is enough for MSNBC to assert that 58 percent of GOPers subscribe to a bizarre conspiracy?" Whitlock fumed. "A Rasmussen poll from May of 2007 found that 61 percent of Democrats either believed that George Bush knew about the 9/11 terror attack in advance or aren't sure. Does that mean that 'most Democrats' are Truthers?"

There are a lot of possible explanations for why the poll numbers "don't say what they seem to say," according to Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein.

"Maybe Research 2000's sample is off. Maybe people don't really believe the answers they give to pollsters. Maybe they do believe these things, but don't take their own beliefs very seriously," said Klein. "But we'd all better hope it's a pretty good explanation, because these are the folks who choose the general election candidates for one of the country's two major parties."

Of course, some were happy to take at least part of the survey at face value. Sarah Palin came out on top -- with 16 percent, compared with 11 percent for Mitt Romney -- when respondents were asked whom they'd pick if the GOP presidential primary were held today. Tommy Report at Conservatives4Palin.com said that proves the ex-governor "seems to have passed the qualifications test with self-identified Republicans."

It's human nature for people to interpret any poll in a way that reinforces what they already believe. And if they can't, they simply dismiss the research as being flawed. Perhaps that is the real takeaway from this survey.