2012 - NO OBAMA

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Poll: 46% of GOP thinks Obama's Muslim

I have a new story up tonight about the latest polling on public views about President Barack Obama's religious beliefs. There's a lot of startling news in these polls--from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and Time Magazine. But one number that could catch significant attention is this: in the Time poll, 46 percent of Republicans said they believe Obama is a Muslim.

In the Pew survey, that number came in somewhat lower: 31 percent.

The Time GOP number isn't posted on the web, as best I can tell, but a spokeswoman for the magazine shared the breakdown of the data at my request.

There are a couple of possible explanations for the Time Poll finding that belief to be more prevalent, both in the public at large and the GOP. First, the Time survey was done Monday and Tuesday, at the height of the controversy over the mosque near ground zero in New York. Second, it used different wording from the Pew survey, which gave respondents a smorgasbord of choices for Obama's possible religion.

Pew asked:

Now, thinking about Barack Obama’s religious beliefs… Do you happen to know what Barack Obama’s religion is? Is he Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, or something else?

Time asked a question which gave more prominence to the possibility Obama is Muslim, but also may have drawn out more subjective feelings from respondents:

Do you personally believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim or a Christian?

For what it's worth, the Pew sample was substantially larger: 3003 respondents including 842 Republicans. Time had 1002 respondents, talked to 295 Republicans and reduced that number to 272 to reweight the poll.

If my math is right, that gives the Pew poll a sampling error for the Republican group of +/- 4.5 percent and the Time poll +/- 5.8 percent.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0810/Poll_46_of_GOP_thinks_Obamas_Muslim.html