Do a quarter of Americans really suspect that President Barack Obama is the antichrist?

Nope. That’s what a page on the Coast to Coast AM web site said. But, it was just repeating a misinterpretation from an article in The Guardian with the sensational title of One in four Americans think Obama may be the antichrist, survey says. The original question and three answers (Do, Not Sure, and Do not) from that survey by Public Policy Polling are shown above. I think that “not sure” means maybe yes, or maybe no, so if you try to go from three answers down to two you should split it between “Do” and Do not” rather than just add it to “Do” to double that percentage. 

Coast to Coast did the same addition on another question, as shown above.

The phone survey done between March 27th and 30th asked 1,247 registered voters twenty questions about a wide variety of conspiracy theories:

Q1: Do you believe that global warming is a hoax, or not? 37% Do, 12% Not sure, 51% Do not.

Q2: Do you believe Osama bin Laden is still alive, or not? 6% Do, 11% Not sure, 83% Do not.

Q3: Do you believe a UFO crashed at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, and the US government covered it up, or not? 21% Do, 32% Not sure, 47% Do not.

Q4: Do you believe that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government, or New World Order, or not? 28% Do, 25% Not sure, 46% Do not.

Q5: Do you believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11th, 2001 attacks on America, or not? 28% Do, 22% Not sure, 51% Do not.

Q6: Do you believe there is a link between childhood vaccines and autism. or not? 20% Do, 34% Not sure, 46% Do not.

Q7: Do you believe the moon landing was faked, or not? 7% Do, 9% Not sure, 84% Do not.

Q8: Do you believe President Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, or not? 13% Do, 13% Not sure, 73% Do not.

Q9: Do you believe the Bush administration intentionally misled the public about the possibility of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to promote the Iraq War, or not? 44% Do, 12% Not sure, 45% Do not.

Q10: Do you believe aliens exist, or not? 29% Do, 24% Not sure, 47% Do not.

Q11: Do you believe the CIA was instrumental in distributing crack cocaine into America’s inner cities in the 1980s, or not? 14% Do, 30% Not sure, 55% Do not.

Q12: Do you believe the government adds fluoride to our water supply, not for dental health reasons, but for other, more sinister reasons, or not? 9% Do, 17% Not sure, 74% Do not.

Q13: Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, or not? 4% Do, 7% Not sure, 88% Do not.

Q14: Do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy, or was there some larger conspiracy at work? 25% Oswald acted alone, 24% Not sure, 51% There was some larger conspiracy.

Q15: Do you believe in Bigfoot or Sasquatch, or not? 14% Do, 14% Not sure, 72% Do not.

Q16: Do you believe media or the government adds secret mind-controlling technology to television broadcast signals, or not? 15% Do, 15% Not sure, 70% Do not.

Q17: Do you believe that the exhaust seen in the sky behind airplanes is actually chemicals sprayed by the government for sinister reasons, or not? 5% Do, 8% Not sure, 87% Do not.

Q18: Do you believe that the pharmaceutical industry is in league with the medical industry to “invent” new diseases in order to make money, or not? 15% Do, 16% Not sure, 69% Do not.

Q19: Do you believe Paul McCartney actually died in a car crash in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a lookalike so The Beatles could continue, or not? 5% Do, 14% Not sure, 80% Do not.

Q20: Do you believe the United States government knowingly allowed the attacks on September 11th, 2001 to happen, or not? 11% Do, 11% Not sure, 78% Do not.

I was happy to see that 15% or less answered “Do” to a dozen questions: Q2, Q7, Q8, Q11, Q12, Q13, Q15, Q16, Q17, Q18, Q19, Q20. Also, 30% or less answered “Do” to another five questions: Q3, Q4, Q5, Q6, Q10. But, over 30% believed that (Q1) global warming is a hoax, (Q9) the Bush administration misled the public about Iraq, and (Q14) there was a Kennedy assassination conspiracy. Their detailed survey results also are categorized by gender, political party, age, and ethnic group. It’s an interesting look into the American psyche.

Before you use a startling statistic in a presentation, you should go back to the original source, rather than depend on something like a silly web page, third hand like a newspaper article, or second hand like a press release.