Can anyone from the southern U.S. explain this?

Bible belt?

I’m not surprised at all, and I’m sure I do come into contact with a great many of them, but I don’t always share their views.

@tom_g Have you ever traveled into the South? That would answer your question.

I lived there (Biloxi, MS) for about 6 months and got patent stares while with my white girlfriend at the time. I have to go live there again temporarily, and I’m pretty much assuming I won’t be talking to or meeting anyone down there, lol.

A lot of right-wing Republicans (religious fundamentalists & evangelicals) firmly believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old, they believe that every word in the Bible is the definitive word of God, they believe that black people are supposed to be slaves (as in the sons of Ham shall be the slaves of Abraham), they believe that women are second class citizens, they think that homosexuals should be killed, they believe that marriage between races is against the word of God (but it is ok to marry your cousin), they believe that the theory of evolution is a lie, etc., etc. These “religious” Republicans are doing their best to strip women of their rights to make their own decisions about their own bodies, they are trying to keep science from being taught in our schools, they are trying to get creationism taught in our schools…..they are a disaster looking for a place to happen & if they win the presidency, the United States will be the scene of the disaster.

@tom_g Where do you live, if I may ask? You sound so surprised…

@FutureMemory – I live in Massachusetts. We have our share of people with ethical and/or reality problems. But these numbers make me think that if you lived in one of these states, you’d have a pretty good chance of meeting these people.

I mean, half of Republican voters in these states believe the president is a Muslim. The fact that he is a professed Christian is not some obscure nugget of info that you’d get from an advanced degree.

Speaking of having difficulty with reality. Only 1 in 4 people accept evolution?!? 1 in 4!

@tom_g Yay for religious brainwashing.

@tom_g, I couldn’t find the polling methodology from your link. I’m sure it is there. What page is it on where they tell how the poll was conducted?

@bkcunningham The final paragraph of the press release portion says: “PPP surveyed 656 likely Republican voters in Mississippi and 600 likely Republican primary voters in Alabama on March 10th and 11th. The margin of error for the Mississippi poll is +/-3.8% and for the Alabama poll it’s +/-4.0%. This poll was not paid for or authorized by any campaign or political organization. PPP surveys are conducted through automated telephone interviews.”

And the questions they asked begin on the following page.

Interesting correlations: 68% report being Evangelical Christians, and 53% have a favorable opinion on Rush Limbaugh.

I saw on the first page where it said the information could be found in the final paragraph, but I looked on the last page. Thank you very much, @augustlan. I appreciate that information. I feel like an idiot for looking on the last page, but I do appreciate ya.’

I looked at the last page, too, then figured out what they meant. I felt lame, too! :p

Wiki: Public Policy Polling (PPP) is an American Democratic Party-affiliated polling firm based in Raleigh, North Carolina.[1][2][3] PPP was founded in 2001 by businessman and Democratic pollster Dean Debnam, the firm’s current president and chief executive officer.

“The liberal website Daily Kos, with sponsorship from the Service Employees International Union, has commissioned more than 100 PPP polls to be conducted and published over the course of the 2012 election cycle.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/52249.html#ixzz1oxQ26AfW

Thank you, @Cruiser. Good research.

@bkcunningham I always say follow the money.

Thanks @Cruiser – Please tell me that these polling results are inaccurate. I’ll sleep better tonight.

@tom_g Think about it. They polled 600 likely Republican Voters, in the South in the heart of the Bible Belt. Then look at the questions and the respecive breakouts of the percentages. The whole thing is a mess or a Democrats dream and a similar sensational poll could be engineered if so desired of likely Democratic voters. I love to take polls just to mess with the pollsters.

@Cruiser, so what percentage of Republican deep south voters do you think actually do believe that Obama is a Muslim and that evolution is false?

Those results are in line with other polls I’ve seen over the years.

@Qingu I have no idea nor do I have any interest to know.

We should have let the south secede when we had the chance :/

@Ponderer983 Now, wait just a minute! Not all of us are bad!

UN.REAL.

Regardless of who paid for this particular poll, the questions seem pretty straightforward. They don’t appear to be designed in such a way as to elicit a specific response.

@Ponderer983 I much prefer shedding the blood of our enemies :D

The researchers knew exactly which telephone exchanges to focus in to get the answers they were looking for. I could call 600 numbers in Alabama and get totally different results because I know which ones to avoid. This is the nature of this kind of research. Hell, I could call 600 households where the respondent might not even know the meaning of evolution and 600 more who would say they hold the theory of evolution to be true. Also, Southerners tend to jerk around with any kind of survey —they don’t like people calling asking them questions but learned long ago to just have fun with it. Also, the whole Evangelical Christian question is irrelevant. They didn’t give people an opportunity to say they were Christian other than Evangelical and no Christian down there would say they were not a Christian. So the answer to the question was yes, even though probably half of the folks were not Evangelicals. Pollsters and the media have come to call all Protestants Evangelicals which is hugely incorrect. But, it gets them the poll results they are after. Unless you are Southern you cannot really get the culture down there. Trust me, that’s the way they want it. Bottom line is that the poll might be somewhat representative regarding the primary vote. But all of the other questions were not good questions and/or people were jerking off the pollsters. That was obvious to me just by the Alabama/Auburn fan ratio. I don’t live down there anymore, but I am Southern.

“people were jerking off the pollsters”

Teehee…... Ok, I’m an idiot.

No one called you an idiot. But you aren’t a Southerner.

@MollyMcGuire I myself can’t find a nefarious flaw in the poll and actually it doesn’t do much more than state the obvious and certainly does not reveal anything new. It was clearly geared at likely Republican primary voters, in the deep south, in the heart of the bible belt, 81% polled are self proclaimed Conservatives and over half of those are hard core conservatives. The questions themselves are all straight forward not a goofball question in the lot. Even the Q about Obama being a Muslim is facing reality with regards to the mindset of some Americans. And as you pointed out a similarly designed poll geared towards Democrats could quite easily gather obvious results.

@Cruiser, while you were following the money, I was looking at the polling company’s website to find other states where they asked the same questions or to find what questions they asked in various states. I couldn’t find anything similar to the questions asked in these two states.

@bkcunningham Well I think that is purely a function on who is requesting and paying for these polls. And it should be of no surprise the questions asked in that neck of the woods.

Again: @bkcunningham and @Cruiser, do you actually believe the poll is inaccurate in its portrait of Republican deep south voters? Why or why not?

I get that you’re suspicious of the pollsters’ motives. That is a separate issue from whether or not the poll reflects reality.

@Qingu, I believe that of the 656 likely Republican voters in Mississippi and 600 likely Republican primary voters in Alabama, with the above margin of errors,: People who accept evolution: 22% in Mississippi, 26% in Alabama.
People who believe Obama is a Muslim: 52% in Mississippi, 45% in Alabama.
Believe that interracial marriage should be illegal: 29% in Mississippi, 21% in Alabama. (Note that an additional 17%/12% are “not sure”).

I wouldn’t be surprised to find those numbers in many states.

@Qingu Please read my answers…

“I myself can’t find a nefarious flaw in the poll and actually it doesn’t do much more than state the obvious and certainly does not reveal anything new.” [snip] “The questions themselves are all straight forward not a goofball question in the lot.”

Since you asked the question I am not suspicious of the pollster at all as he appears to have built a credible business asking the questions he is paid to ask. I don’t even deny his liberal clientele the opportunity to spend their money asking very obvious answers to get very obvious answers anyone in the know already knows. To me though it underscores a very real issue Obama has when such a high percentage of potential voters albeit hard core conservatives still thinks he is Muslim.

Ah. So you think the backwardsness of Republican primary voters, as evidenced by answers to such questions, is not limited to the Deep South? Maybe. I’d be interested to see data to that effect.

@Cruiser, you said, “To me is underscores a very real issue Obama has when such a high percentage of potential voters albeit hard core conservatives still thinks he is Muslim.”

I guess that’s one way of looking at it. To me, it underscores the fact that a significant part of the American voting population is dangerously ignorant and apparently uneducable. Whether such people are geographically limited to the deep south or are evenly spread across the country is an interesting side question.

@Qingu I think that is a dangerous assumption on your part that a “significant part of the American voting population is dangerously ignorant and apparently uneducable” as this “image” problem Obama has is very real and stems from a very real sources of information both real and contrived. Isn’t free speech a beautiful thing?

@Cruiser – What “very real sources of information” could be responsible for the fact that these people believe that the president is a Muslim? @Qingu‘s “dangerously ignorant and apparently uneducable” seems to apply to this case.

And what the hell does “free speech” have to do with anything I said?

@tom_g Wow! If believing the talking heads of our elite media suddenly makes the gullible public “dangerously ignorant and apparently uneducable” you have single-handedly indicted a vast majority of the US population as “dangerously ignorant and apparently uneducable”!

@Qingu LOL! Do you really need me to explain this to you??

@Cruiser: “Wow! If believing the talking heads of our elite media suddenly makes the gullible public “dangerously ignorant and apparently uneducable” you have single-handedly indicted a vast majority of the US population as “dangerously ignorant and apparently uneducable”!”

I’m not sure I follow what you’re saying here. You didn’t answer my question (“What “very real sources of information” could be responsible for the fact that these people believe that the president is a Muslim?”). Instead, you seem to have made a claim that the “talking heads of our elite media” have told the U.S. population that the current president of the U.S. is a Muslim. Is this what you are saying?

Yes, please explain your free speech comment to me. What does it have to do with what I said?

@Qingu It didn’t have anything to do directly with what you said as my comment was directed at the desperate media and Super Pacs can say and do what ever they want and with enough conviction and appearance of legitimacy to fool so many people the way they have. For the record I do not lump you into that unfortunate category.

hello?

Yeah I don’t get it. You’ll have to walk me through your line of reasoning starting from the following comment:

“I think that is a dangerous assumption on your part that a “significant part of the American voting population is dangerously ignorant and apparently uneducable” as this “image” problem Obama has is very real and stems from a very real sources of information both real and contrived. Isn’t free speech a beautiful thing?”

@Qingu I am NOT the one who said that you are. So YOU explain how you could indict so many people of our country as “significant part of the American voting population is dangerously ignorant and apparently uneducable”. Explain what significant means to you?? Maybe I just do need to include you??

I am talking about the people in the poll who believe that Obama is a Muslim and that evolution is false.

You seemed to agree that the poll is accurate.

We’re talking about more than half of Republican voters. That’s significant. Do you disagree that these views are “dangerously ignorant”?

@Qingu Well then don’t you think you should have worded your statement….“a significant part of the American voting population is dangerously ignorant and apparently uneducable”. to a small marginal segment of the Religious Right?? I am not threatened by people that have twisted views if I was I would have left here a long time ago! lol!

People who accept evolution: 22% in Mississippi, 26% in Alabama… These poll numbers read like some kind of dystopian nightmare novel to me.
My dog, the world is about to flipping end because some people don’t think that we came from monkeys.~

@Linda_Owl
A lot of right-wing Republicans (religious fundamentalists & evangelicals) firmly believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old
A reasonable assumption, since the Bible never actually specifies.

they believe that every word in the Bible is the definitive word of God
‘Cos it is.

they believe that black people are supposed to be slaves (as in the sons of Ham shall be the slaves of Abraham)
You’re making that one up.

they believe that women are second class citizens
That one, too. Or else you’re twisting someone’s words.

they think that homosexuals should be killed
Or just not allowed to be gay.

they believe that marriage between races is against the word of God (but it is ok to marry your cousin)
More slander.

they believe that the theory of evolution is a lie.
Because it says quite clearly in Genesis that we were created as-is.—Additionally, evolution as a concept is heavily promoted as the ‘atheist option’ which simply doesn’t sit well with Christians.

These “religious” Republicans are doing their best to strip women of their rights to make their own decisions about their own bodies
Political posturing. They want to keep the innocent from being killed for convenience.

they are trying to keep science from being taught in our schools, they are trying to get creationism taught in our schools
So’s y’all don’t go rotting in Hell. Christians are neighborly that way.

…..they are a disaster looking for a place to happen & if they win the presidency, the United States will be the scene of the disaster.
See that line of men, stretching off into the past? Those are our Presidents. Most of them were Christians, likely meeting a lot of these criteria. Yet things are doing pretty well, huh?

So tempted to respond point by point.

@Qingu Why waste your time?

@Nullo you must not be up on your Bible reading if you do not recognize the quote “the sons of Ham will be the slaves of the sons of Abraham” – this was even used in the Civil War as justification for keeping African-Americans as slaves. Science has shown that our planet is billions of years old – NOT 6,000 years old. The Bible was written by men – so men created God, not the other way around. Our founding Fathers were, basically, NOT Christians – they all spoke out against involving religion in our secular government – they were Scientists. As for women, the Bible is just as adament as the Koran is where women are concerned. We are supposed to have no rights other than what is allowed by our husbands, we are not supposed to speak out in church (we are supposed to wait until we get home & ask our husbands to explain the sermon to us), women are not supposed to be allowed to teach anything to men. If the right-wing tea party Republicans get their way, women will be stripped of our right to make our own decisions about our own bodies. Women are the equal of men & men should not be able to tell us what we can or cannot do with our own bodies. Things are not going well here on planet earth. We are ruining our environment, poisoning our oceans, poisoning the water we need to drink, people are under the control of big corporations, jobs are scarce, education is going to hell in a hand-basket, teachers get almost no respect, the income gap is huge between the wealthy & those that are not wealthy. All of this in the face of the Bible saying that it is easier for a ‘camel to go thru the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven’ ..... something that corporate America chooses to ignore.

I’m pretty sure Nullo is on record as supporting the legalization of slavery, since the Bible says it should be legal in Leviticus 25:45. He is probably against the racial dimension of American slavery however.

@Qingu I’m pretty sure Nullo can speak for himself.

@Linda_Owl My Bible subjugates Canaan to the other two of Noah’s sons. Abraham doesn’t show up for some generations yet.—Also, the Table of Nations generally sees Hamites moving through the Middle East and Asia, not Africa (except for a bit of Libya).

this was even used in the Civil War as justification for keeping African-Americans as slaves.
And that’s a people problem, comes from people trying to justify things.

Science has shown that our planet is billions of years old – NOT 6,000 years old
And the scientific truth changes regularly as new findings are found. I stake my lot on them eventually coming around.

The Bible was written by men – so men created God, not the other way around.
This here only holds if your initial premise, that there is no God, is true. So far, non-religious types haven’t worked out the particulars of that one.

Our founding Fathers were, basically, NOT Christians – they all spoke out against involving religion in our secular government
A few were Deists. Most of them were Christians of one stripe or another. They spoke out against a state church, or a state-run church. They certainly didn’t want to disenfranchise the devout.

they were Scientists
Benjamin Franklin was a scientist. Most of the rest were political scientists at best.

We are supposed to have no rights other than what is allowed by our husbands
Show, plz. I’m pretty sure you’re exaggerating.

we are not supposed to speak out in church
Not supposed to teach, actually. Most churches frown on interruptions from the pews regardless of sex.

women will be stripped of our right to make our own decisions about our own bodies
Nooo, we’ll try to remove the ‘right’ to kill inconvenient unborn people, so that you’ll have to be a bit more responsible with yourself. Big difference. If this were just about your own body, I guarantee that nobody would be nearly this upset about any of this. It’s the other body, the one that gets dismembered and sucked into a vacuum cleaner, that has us conservative types upset.

Women are the equal of men
I’ve always felt that “complementary” or perhaps “comparable” was a better adjective. Men are not women, and women are not men, so you can’t really say that we’re truly equal outside of the law.

…All of this in the face of the Bible saying that it is easier for a ‘camel to go thru the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven’
And if more people were healthy Christians, this wouldn’t be an issue. Most of us who vote Republican do it because voting Democrat would empower people who would further curtail our religious freedoms in the name of tolerance and diversity. Republicans will be sympathetic – or at least non-hostile – to get votes.

@Qingu Here, try this Better answer than I could give at 1 a.m., especially considering the spin that you slapped onto that ball. I do think that we might be able to get some mileage out of a legal option to work off debt, possibly learning a skill in the process.

@Nullo, so you agree with that article’s author that slavery is okay, just as long as it’s not racially based and as long as you don’t beat your slave much worse than the Romans beat Jesus before they crucified him (ie, no knocking out teeth, breaking bones, or gauging eyes)?

Wellokay. Though your article is confusing in its wholesale opposition to the slave trade. Or maybe the Bible is inconsistent on this point. Because Lev 25:45 explicitly says you can purchase slaves from foreigners and pass them down to your kids. Is the article wrong, or is the Bible wrong?

@Qingu I agree that the Bible does not outlaw all slavery, and that it’s a useful metaphor. I get the impression that, Biblically, slavery is permitted, but not encouraged, and is generally back-burnered in favor of more pressing matters
. I don’t think you actually read the article, though, and I’d be much obliged if you’d stop trying to put words in my mouth.

You might also look into Oklahoma to find similar ignorance. It just proves that the lack of proper public education results in ignorant people that are easy to rule. They are steeped in their traditions and religion so there is no way for them to get a proper education unless they leave the state. I notice that educated people are more liberal and less easily led into self destructive decisions. This is one of the reasons the Republicans attack teachers and higher education.