Poll: 13% Of Voters Are Fooled By Obama/Muslim Smear
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Polls, Religion
Seriously. 13%.
This from a new WSJ/NBC poll (pdf) out today.
What’s worrisome about this is the same pollsters asked people back in December the same question and the number who believed Obama was a muslim then was only 8%. This suggests the whisper campaign is working and that’s incredibly disheartening.
So how to combat the ignorance? Well, I’m sure some of it’s willful, so it’ll be impossible to drive the number down to 0%. But it might be helpful to start asking friends and acquaintances what they believe. Because chances are you may know somebody who potentially thinks this. After all, 13% represents about 1/8th of the electorate.
Time to correct the record one person at a time. It’s the only just and right thing to do.
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Polls, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 13th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Obama doesn’t affiliate himself with a mosque! He affiliates himself with Jeremiah Wright. Based on the racist, hate-fueled “sermons” I’ve heard from Mr. Wright, Obama should denounce him even more strongly than he did Farrakhan.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Unfortunately even my mom bought into that one since it was forwarded to her from a trusted friend. Fortunately I was able to set the record straight.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:21 am
I have a neighbor / ex-friend who insists Obama is muslim. I attempted to tell him that he’s is Christian, and there have been testimonials of people that have gone to church with him for years, his Muslim father left him when he was two so had little influence, etc. He says unflinchingly, “with a name like Hussein, you can’t tell me he’s not a Muslim.” Then when I pushed it, because he was obviously being ignorant, he just resorted to calling him a n*****. At that point his bias was clear. I’m afraid that is the real situation with a large number of people, as this person wasn’t the only one I’ve had a near identical conversation with. I think it boils down to the fact that people associate Muslims with terrorists, and it is ok to hate terrorists. So even though they really hate him for the color of his skin, and their fear of anything different, they say it’s because of his religion and how it will cause the downfall of America if a terrorist is elected. Somehow, that is ok.
March 14th, 2008 at 10:43 am
[...] recent NBC/WSJ poll showed that 13 percent of voters still think Obama is a Muslim. That’s up from eight percent in [...]
March 14th, 2008 at 11:46 am
It would actually be better for Obama is be a Muslim than to be a family-friend and loyal, faithful follower of this Jeremiah Wright lunatic. It shows incredibly bad Judgment by Obama - or incredible political expendiency — an attack often heard against the Clintons.
March 14th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
WTF is wrong with being Muslim? We aren’t seriously suggesting that calling Obama a Muslim is a smear, are we? Even if 50% believed it to be true, the only people who would let that determine their vote are racist, intolerant people anyway and they’re not going to vote for Obama no matter what religion he is.
March 14th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
First off, nobody’s saying that being a Muslim is a bad thing.
But seriously, you don’t get the implication is that he doesn’t believe in God and may be some sort of crypto-terrorist Manchurian Candidate?
Get with the program doctor.
March 14th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Muslims believe in the same god Christians do. Even Ahmadinejad has recognized this fact. And the kind of people who will be going to hell according to the Qu’ran - the terrorists that have our panties in a bunch are the perfect example.
I’m not saying I don’t see what the implication is, I’m saying the implication is offensive. I know you don’t necessarily believe it, but that survey measures who believes he’s Muslim, not who believes he’s a terrorist trained to take over our government.
What makes you think all 13% honestly believe Muslim = terrorist? And like I said, even if that were true, those people wouldn’t be voting for him anyway.
March 14th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I have been responding to this one for a while, as I would get this e-mail forwarded to me periodically. My SOP was to harvest every e-mail address I could find in the chain - whether I knew them or not - then send a reply to all changing the first word of the headline to HOAX - linking the Snopes website documenting the hoax, and asking everyone who received and forwarded the e-mail to correct their mistake by forwarding my e-mail to anyone who received the original.
I have not seen this e-mail in a few months though - I don’t know why, since it is still out there and circulating in a big way. Maybe my spam filter is intercepting it.
That said - I agree with the good doctor. The people who believe this are the people who want to believe it - mostly the right wing nutbag fringe - and they were never going to vote for Obama anyway. They think they are doing something by sending this back and forth to one another, but it is, of course, just a big echo chamber.
May 27th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
No I think the numbers are a lot higher. And no we aren’t the ones who are fooled, it’s you people who support Obama and that ractists wife of his thats fooled, take off your blinders before its too little too late..
We 10% which I think that number is not correct, see right through him and we are smart enough to question which is what any half way intelligent person should do.do you people still remember 911?? Wake up obama supporters before its too late.