ABC News/Washington Post Poll:Birthers

Direct .pdf link with charts, data and less spin
For those that like journalistic spin, the article.

THE QUESTION – This ABC/Post poll posed the question neutrally; first: "On another subject, where was Barack Obama born, as far as you know?" Sixty-eight percent said the United States (or a location within the country), 14 percent said another country and 19 percent had no opinion.

So let's see here 68+14+19=101%, So the margin of error (from rounding) is okay. However adding 14% and 19% makes for more than more than 1 in 5. Most people's concept of math figure 33% to be 1 in 3, but journalists are not known for knowing much. They just spit out the story that the editors want told. So when they said if you add in the believers and the ones with no opinion that the number becomes 1 in 5 (20%), they are stacking the division of 19% with 2/3 becoming non-birthers.

Now the interesting part of the spin is the data on less than high school diploma and post graduates. The two points are extremes on the education bell curve. Why not include the data set from high school graduates, attend college, college graduate? I would suspect that those numbers would detract from the image of less education=stupid that this information is trying to spin.

Even the title is misleading. Basically the only real information to be honestly gathered from this poll is that 14% think Obama was born outside the country with half thinking it to be true and half suspecting it to be true.

But then again, with a sample size only being 1001, the information is far from conclusive. A sample of 3.2 million would only represent 1% of the US so 1001 would be .0003%. Hardly a statistic worth noting.