A May 5 Washington Post poll found that the percentage of people who believe that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. has fallen in half over the last month.
A May 4 YouGov poll found that 22 percent of Republicans still do not believe Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen, down from 27 percent before he released his birth certificate on April 27. The poll also found that 5 percent of people do not believe Hawaii was a state in 1961 and 26 percent are not sure. (Hawaii has been a state since 1959.)
Also on May 4, Pew published a study on the ideological segmentation of the American public.
An April 29 Gallup poll found the two political parties pretty evenly split in terms of favorability.
An April 28 Gallup poll found an increasing percentage of people have an unfavorable opinion of the Tea Party and a declining percentage have a favorable opinion. The former percentage has risen from 42 percent in January to 47 percent, and the latter has fallen from 39 percent to 33 percent.
An April 28 commentary by political scientist Rhodes Cook compared the presidential nominating process in the Republican and Democratic parties.
An April 27 SurveyUSA poll found that a third of Republicans do not believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States.
On April 26, the Pew Hispanic Center published a study of Latino voting. It found that a declining portion of the eligible Latino population has voted in every midterm election since 1986.
An April 25 PPP poll examined attitudes about the Civil War in three southern states. In Mississippi, only 34 percent of people are glad the North won; 27 percent favor a victory for the South; and 39 percent of people are unsure. In another question, 9 percent of people in Mississippi said they have a higher opinion of the KKK than the NAAP; 42 percent of people were unsure. Voters in Georgia and North Carolina gave similar but slightly less racist answers.
An April 21 CBS News/New York Times poll found that 45 percent of Republicans do not believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States; 22 percent have no idea.
An April 5 Pew poll found much stronger support for Israel among evangelicals than among Catholics or mainline Protestants.
I last posted items on this topic on April 13.
Bruce Bartlett is an American historian and columnist who focuses on the intersection between politics and economics. He blogs daily and writes a weekly column at The Fiscal Times. Bartlett has written for Forbes Magazine and Creators Syndicate, and his work is informed by many years in government, including as a senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House. He is the author of seven books including the New York Times best-seller, Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (Doubleday, 2006).
