Mitt Romney Killed Osama bin Laden!
6% of Ohio voters think Mitt Romney deserves more credit than the commander-in-chief for killing Osama bin Laden.
A Public Policy Polling survey inexplicably asked the question, “Who do you think deserves more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?”
Not surprisingly, Obama did very well on this question, getting more credit than his not-the-president opponent from 63% of the respondents. Another 31% weren’t sure and 6% gave Romney the edge.
You can’t make this up.
Update (Doug Mataconis): I used Twitter to ask PPP what the purpose of the question was, their response pointed me to a Tweet from early this morning after the poll was released:
The reason for the Osama bin Laden question was to see if Republican voters would give credit to Obama for anything. Evidently answer is no
— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) September 10, 2012
I can’t say I’m all that impressed with the response. Asking an inherently silly question doesn’t necessarily tell us much of anything, because we don’t know how many people may have responded with the obviously wrong answer just to mess with the poll. I know that if they’d called me and that question had come up, my reaction would have been to laugh hysterically and then, possibly hang up because obviously they couldn’t have been serious. Ask serious questions, pollsters, not nonsense.
I don’t get that one at all. The poll itself seems fairly sold to me, but that question is just dumb.
Then again, Pollsters have been known to ask dumb questions before. Every Thanksgiving, Scott Rasmussen releases a poll result that confirms that, yes indeed, most Americans will be having turkey for dinner that day.
It’s a good question. It really means “how much are you willing to mess with this poll?”
The other question is who the heck the 6% who give Mitt Romney any credit at all actually are?
I almost wonder if this was a question they slipped into the poll to see if people are actually paying attention to the options being given (this is an interactive poll remember). If that’s the case, though I’m not sure why they would’ve released the results.
@john personna:
I’d be interested to hear from someone at PPP about why they put that question in
@Doug Mataconis:
Just asking, is there a difference in between years? I’m just curious about it and can’t seem to find it through google.
About the turkey.
Everybody knows Dick Cheney road in on the back of a Tomahawk cruise missile to do the job.
Note, it isn’t really just the 6%. The 31% who are “unsure” are actually people who can’t bring themselves to credit Obama to a pollster. That’s also messing with the outcome, being just unwilling to give Obama more credit than Romney for something Romney wast totally unconnected from.
Zombieland is pretty f’n dumb, but obviously that 6% are people just screwing around with the pollsters. Because if they actually were that dumb then they’d be catatonic and ergo non communicative.
@Tsar Nicholas:
37% were screwing with the pollster.
@john personna:
Yep. Especially the 6%. There’s a lot of folks who dislike polls, and I’d guess some of them make a point of giving false info just to screw them up.
I’m guessing the 31% who said “Not Sure” are those who want to credit the SEAL Team rather than the president. And some of that represents a literal response, and some is ‘anybody but Obama.’
Slim Pickins took Bin Laden down…
Actually, this is better than expected. If we arbitrarily assume half the 31% undecided are jerking around the pollsters or insist all credit should go to the SEALs. That leaves 15% genuinely uncertain and 6% sure of the wrong thing. That’s 21%, actually less than the frequently recurring 27% Crazification Factor.
Of course my assumption that half the undecides are really undecided may be optomistic.
@Doug Mataconis:
People who think a stupid question deserves a stupid answer?
The explanation for the question was pretty simple and straight forward enough. The intent was to weed out potential malignant voters who won’t credit Obama anything out of spite. I have to admit that why it was a sneaky trick, those are really awful numbers if you combine undecided and ‘no’ to give you a whopping 37% of registered Ohioan Republicans. That’s human garbage right there.
Yeah, PPP, stop asking poll questions that force Republicans to look stupid!
It’s not FAIR!