You crapped all over the Daily KOS poll. Today we see THREE more polling agencies find similar results....
According to a new poll conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Center for Research, over one-third of Republicans would like to see more coverage about the so-called "birther movement."
According to the poll, 39 percent of Republicans, 30 percent of Independents and 14 percent of Democrats want to be updated on the progress of a movement that has perplexed reasonable political observers for its rapid growth.
Even popular, staunchly conservative pundits like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter have tried debunked the claims of this movement. Coulter refers to the birthers as “just a few cranks out there”.
Yet still, the group has gained a lot of media coverage for an idea that is not largely supported by the Republican party's base.
Michael Dimock, an associate director at the Pew Research Center, admitted he was surprised by the results of the survey.
"If anything surprised me, it's how many people have heard about this," he explained. "When we put the question in, we said to ourselves, well, Lou Dobbs has covered it, and it's been discussed on the Internet. For 80 percent of people to have heard something about this is pretty high."
The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder is on the fence about the birthers' effects.
"This is, at once, a fringe movement and something greater. It’s fringe because no important Republicans believe it, and most are offended by it. It’s greater because some fairly prominent local lawmakers are beginning to sign birther petitions."
“Republicans have to be extra careful If they give credence to the birthers, they are not only advancing ignorance, but also betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition," Ambinder continues.
Nonetheless, Dimock argues that the increased number of Republicans interested in additional coverage about the birther movement does not necessarily indicated that they are birthers themselves. Rather, this number could be influenced by skeptics who simply want to see more negative coverage about the current administration.
“With President Obama’s poll numbers collapsing, why are some conservative Republicans hurting themselves with nonsense?” asked O'Reilly.
The effects of these statistics from the Pew Center are not unique.
A survey conducted by Public Policy Polling asked Virginians, “Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States?”
Only 53 percent of respondents were confident that the President is a legal citizen. Twenty four percent answered "no" and an additional 24 percent indicated they were not sure.
Similar results were reached by the Orange County Register's OC Political Pulse last October. Their poll concluded that a third of Republicans sampled believed that Obama was not born in the United States.
