Ethics

The South and Birtherism

By Ed Brayton

Dave Weigel has been doing some analysis of the popularity of the Birther movement among Republicans at the Washington Independent and has found some very interesting disparities. A couple weeks ago he wrote that only the South has a significant percentage of people who doubt Obama's citizenship, and a look at polling data shows that it might be as high as 70% of Southern whites.

More recently, he points to a poll out of North Carolina that showed that only 24% of Republicans in that state think Obama was born in the United States. But in Utah, which is every bit as staunchly conservative and has a higher percentage of whites than anywhere in the South, only 9% doubt that Obama was born here, and only 18% of self-identified conservatives:

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on August 13, 2009 (boomark / email).