From Public Policy Polling (sigh):
We’ve been uncovering a remarkable level of anger toward Barack Obama in a lot of our recent polling so for New Jersey we decided to go a step further in determining how extreme some people’s feelings are about the President and asked respondents if they think he is the Anti-Christ.
8% said yes. 13% aren’t sure. Among Republicans 14% said yes and 15% weren’t sure.
Pretty eye popping numbers. The extent to which some people already hate Obama is amazing. We’ll test that question nationally this weekend.
And just in case you mistakenly think that all of the pistachio nuts are in just one political party, keep this in mind:
The extremism in New Jersey isn’t limited to the right though. 19% of voters in the state, including 32% of Democrats, think that George W. Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11.
Beyond that 21% of respondents, including 33% of Republicans, express the belief that Obama was not born in the United States.
There’s more so read it in its entirety. This underscores a fact: some Americans will believe anything they are told if it comes from a source they trust or a figure or institution with whom they already agree. Not a good harbinger for the U.S. as it heads into what promises to be an ever more polarized 21st century where people talk past each other, instead of with each other.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.