Did you know: 1 out of 10 voters think Obama is Muslim?

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[BloGate link] Autor: Shan-ul-Hai Blog profile: Shan

The Pew Research Center, which always seems to come up with great surveys and statistics, recently asked people if they think that Barack Obama is Muslim. 10% of people said “yes”, which is obviously wrong. Do people think that Islam is an ethnicity and not a religion? Or do they think that anybody who lived in Indonesia is a Muslim? Well, it’s probably not the latter… because most Americans don’t even know that Indonesia is a Muslim country. So they must be basing their conclusions on faulty assumptions or random rumors… and if you look at the actual data, it’s even more convincing: —The opinions are divided across party lines. 16% of conservative Republicans were skeptical of Obama’s beliefs, while only 5% of liberal Democrats felt the same way. —16% of evangelical Protestants thought that Obama was Muslim, while only 7% of mainline Protestants agreed. However, neither group was much more likely than the other (50% vs. 59%, respectively) to believe that he’s Christian. —More educated people are less likely to have the misconception. Among college graduates, 73% think he’s Christian and 5% think he’s Muslim; among people who didn’t go to college, half as many people think he’s Christian (37%) and three times as many believe he’s Muslim (15%). —People are very divided based on their region. 19% of rural residents believe that Obama is Muslim, probably because they’re not as well-exposed to different cultures. In cities and suburbs, the number is less than half as much. The same sort of trend is evident if you compare the Northeast (7%), the West (6%), the Midwest (13%), and the South (13%). I’m almost ashamed to live in a non-urban Midwestern area. It’s obvious that among people who have more experience with world cultures and religions (college graduates, urban residents, people on the East Coast), Obama’s religion is much less of a controversy. Personally, I don’t even understand how people can make a controversy out of an unquestionable fact… I guess we’ll have to wait until November to see how big of an effect this has on the election.

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