Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos (4/28-5/1, registered voters, Feb. 2011 (PDF) in parens):
Q: Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States?
Yes: 67 (55)
No: 20 (27)
Not sure: 13 (18)
(MoE: ±3.1%)
After Barack Obama released his so-called "long form" birth certificate last week, we wanted to know if doing so would make any difference at all to the birthers. The answer, believe it or not, is yes—with a "but." Yes, the number of birthers did in fact decrease, much to my surprise. But (I told you it was coming) a majority of Republicans still say that Obama wasn't born in the United States or they're not sure. Here's how it breaks down by party:
Democrats:
Yes: 86 (82)
No: 9 (11)
Not sure: 4 (7)
Republicans:
Yes: 45 (26)
No: 32 (47)
Not sure: 23 (27)
Independents:
Yes: 66 (54)
No: 21 (19)
Not sure: 13 (26)
I suppose we should be glad that there's a nominally reachable section of the GOP electorate, a group that went from 26% reality-based to 45% in the face of incontrovertible, widely disseminated information. But as you can see, 32% of Republicans still flat-out say "no" when asked if Obama was born in this country, and somehow 23% still can't make up their minds. I know that not everyone follows the news cycle as obsessively as we do, but I think it was hard to miss the birth certificate business last week.
While we may not see much more of this issue on the national stage after last week's release of the certificate (and Birther-in-Chief Donald Trump's utter humiliation), these numbers show that this issue still has real appeal to the hardest-core part of the GOP base. In fact, self-identified Tea Party members are still birthers by a narrow plurality. So I suspect that Republican candidates will still be tempted to play to the mouth-breathers. In other words, as long as he doesn't recant too fulsomely, there's still a place for The Donald—and if the rump birther movement has its way, it'll be as the Republican nominee for president in 2012.
