Nearly 60% of Republicans Believe Birther Claims May Have Merit

Wow. This is just a crazy stat.

Politico:

A whopping 58 percent of Republicans either think Barack Obama wasn't born in the US (28 percent) or aren't sure (30 percent). A mere 42 percent think he was.

That means a majority of Republicans polled either don't know about -- or don't believe the seemingly incontrovertible evidence Obama's camp has presented over and over and over that he was born in Hawaii in '61.

It also explains why Republicans, including Roy Blunt, are playing footsie with the Birther fringe.

Score one for quick and dirty calculation. A few days ago, I wrote that "by quick and dirty calculation, birthers may make up as much as 30% of the GOP." Now it turns out that I'm off a whopping 2%. The breakdown:

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 7/27-30. All adults. MoE 2% (No trend lines)

Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?

Yes 77
No 11
Not sure 12

How do those numbers break down?

Yes No Not sure
Dem 93 4 3
Rep 42 28 30
Ind 83 8 9

Northeast 93 4 3
South 47 23 30
Midwest 90 6 4
West 87 7 6

18-29 88 4 8
30-44 72 14 14
45-59 82 8 10
60+ 69 17 14

So 28% are honest-to-God birthers, while an additional 30% are what you'd have to call birther agnostics. All told, nearly 60% of Republicans think there might at least be something to the birthers' claims.

"Reasonable and responsible conservatives... are stuck," writes GOP op Bill Pascoe. "We are being lumped in with irresponsible and unreasonable conspiracy theorists."

Turns out that this is because the vast majority of you are "irresponsible and unreasonable conspiracy theorists."