On that Kos Birther Poll..

Markos is trumpeting the findings of a poll he commissioned to bash the birth cert conspiracy folks as a bunch of GOP racists. Not only that, but they are also disproportionately from the south. Errrr, errrr, quick, somebody get Voinovich's thoughts!

First of all, what kind of polling group is 'Research 2000'? Well, according to their 'about us':

RESEARCH 2000 is a nonpartisan full service research firm that conducts surveys and focus groups for advocacy groups, trade associations, businesses and over 300 news media organizations.

Keep that '300 media organizations' in mind when considering this post on their main page:

Between the birthers, daily racism and xenophobia that pollutes the discourse in our great nation, I was thinking that the phrase “the inmates are running the asylum” defines the present situation best.

So it appears their version of "nonpartisan" seems a tad partisan. OK, with that established...

The first question, "Do you believe that America and Africa were once part of the same continent?" was designed to identify religious respondents (primarily fundamentalists) without actually asking about religion, since most 'young earth' Christians cannot believe in the Pangaea theory if the earth is only 6000 years old. Crafty libs.

Unfortunately for Kos it flopped like a dead fish because all three political groups polled came out with near or above 50 percent in answering "no" or "not sure" to the question, which removed it as a serious talking point. Obviously he wanted to slant the poll using correlations between religious fundies and 'birthers' in the ongoing desperate effort to keep this conspiracy alive.

Yet there does seem to be a disproportionate level of disbelief in the south compared to the rest of the country. This is enough red meat for Kos to justify spending the money because he can spin it as dirty rednecks making up most of nirther nation. Thing is, the poll wasn't broken down into how many southern respondents were Repub, Indy, or Dem. The methodology says:

A cross-section of calls was made into each state in the country in order to reflect the adult population nationally.

Fine, what was the cross section in the south? How many of the 527 Repubs polled nationwide came from that defined area? Was the 'cross section' of the 720 respondents in the south exactly the same as for every geographic region?

Another aspect is regional heritage. Saying 'the south' is almost like using a racial epithet for some, bringing to mind images of sheets and lynchings. AmeriKKKa. But just because someone lives in the south doesn't mean they're 'southern' (wink, wink). There are many transplants down here. How can anything be made out of the data without first verifying the heritage of the respondents?

If Kos really wants to make accurate regional blanket insinuations perhaps he should command his phony baloney polling group to go back and do it again, this time asking each southern respondent to provide a certified copy of their vault birth certificate before proceeding in an effort to establish how many have true hillbilly/confederate/white supremacist ancestry.

SURE ENOUGH 8/2/09

Liberal outlets using this as a wedge are ignoring the first question, ie, 49 percent of polled Dems do not believe in (or aren't sure of) the Pangaea Theory.