I'm seeing a lot of conservatives, referring to the emerging possibility that Research 2000's polls for Daily Kos were fradulent, say that means all of the findings from the infamous poll about crazy things Republicans think are bogus. While I'd agree that Research 2000's poll may have been bogus, I would not agree it means Republicans don't think those things. We have polled on many of the same issue over the last year and in some cases found even more Republicans buying into some of those conspiracy theories. For instance:
-In September we found only 37% of Republicans believed Barack Obama was born in the United States while 42% think he was not and 22% were unsure. Those numbers actually showed a higher birther quotient than the discredited R2K numbers that claimed 42% of Republicans believed Obama was born in the country while 36% thought he was not, and 22% were unsure.
-In November we found 52% of Republicans thought ACORN stole the 2008 Presidential election for Barack Obama while 27% thought he legitimately won it and 21% were unsure. That again showed a much higher level of belief in election fraud than the R2K numbers that claimed 21% of Republicans believed the election was stolen while 24% thought it was not and 55% were unsure.
-In December we found 35% of Republicans thought Barack Obama should be impeached while 48% thought he should not be and 17% were unsure. The Research 2000 poll claimed a similar, although slightly higher, level of support for impeachment from Republicans with 39% favoring it, 32% opposed, and 29% not sure.
Would I be leery of the Research 2000 findings on some of these extremist Republican views? Absolutely. But other pollsters have found the same thing. The discrediting of R2K doesn't change the fact that many GOP voters do subscribe to these unproven conspiracy theories.
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