That "Birther" Thing

It's so nice to write about a birther issue that doesn't involve Barack Obama. I published a couple of research articles on that topic, so I'm more or less read into the extant literature. In other words, I know what I'm talking about. But of course now we have Ted Cruz, that Canadian-Texan-American candidate for the GOP nomination and the "birther" questions about him, fueled mostly by Donald Trump.

The law stuff doesn't interest me. I'm not a lawyer, so I leave the constitutional questions to folks who understand this stuff. Instead, let's look at ... the polling.

Here's a new poll out about Cruz, and I've pasted the news lede below for your enjoyment:

A quarter of Republicans think White House hopeful Ted Cruz is disqualified to serve as U.S. president because he was born in Canada to an American mother, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

A quarter is a decent number, given it's fellow Republicans. Yeah yeah, but what kind of poll is this? You can't tell from this version, so let's dig a little deeper. Except I'm having no luck finding the poll's methodology. Type "birther" into the Reuters poll search bar and you get zilch. It's a Friday afternoon. I give up. Nevertheless, I suspect it's a robo-poll or perhaps an Internet opt-in panel poll, neither of which qualifies as the gold standard of polling (live humans, dialing live humans, on landline and cell phones).

In the debate last night Cruz admirably shrugged off Trump's attacks, or at least it seemed to me. That said, how many undecided folks actually watched the debate? On my cable TV it played out on Channel 77. I didn't even know I had a Channel 77. This is the kind of niggling doubt that can affect a candidate like Cruz, who isn't all that likable in the first place, and especially when Iowa appears (at least according to the polls) to be a tight race. A lot of political observers believe the tightness of the polls mask the actual turnout Cruz will see, as compared to Trump, when it's time to caucus. I agree, and yet Trump continues to surprise us. The man is amazing.

OK, a thing about belief in conspiracy theories, or at least stuff like birtherism that comes close enough to that category to warrant a look. Here's what the research tells us -- there are a lot of folks who believe in this kind of stuff for ideological or partisan reasons, but there are lots of folks who believe in conspiracies or misperceptions that cross ideological boundaries. In other words, some folks are born conspiracists. At a gut level they believe the system is rigged against them and tend to believe in any theory that supports that gut feeling.

My hunch? That quarter of Republicans is made up mostly of Trumpsters, but also there's a chunk of folks in there who believe anything if it somehow fits a conspiracy theory model -- that powerful outside forces conspire to work against average people.

Enough theorizing. Have a helluva weekend.

Has the Birther Movement Peaked?

Despite a New York Times poll that finds a quarter of adults, and nearly half of all Republicans, believe President Barack Obama was born somewhere other than the U.S., I think we're seeing signs that the candles on the birther movement cake may be burning out.  Yes, state legislators keep trying to keep the candles lit through various laws, but even Tea Party favorite U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann admitted, upon being shown Obama's certificate of live birth, that the issue appears to be "settled." 

Donald Trump may not have gotten the inter-party memo, but I sense those at the top of the GOP, who are not above feeding the crazies (Dems too, in their own special way), are starting to edge away from the Cliffs of Despair.

In other words, I argue that the movement has peaked.

You'd hope so, with 45 percent of GOPers believing Obama was born somewhere other than where all official and semi-official evidence points -- Hawaii.  Trump may have hijacked the issue for a while, but most folks assume this will play out when he ducks out of actually running for office.

A year ago, 20 percent of adults thought Obama was born elsewhere.  Earlier this month it was at 24 percent.  Now it's 25 percent.  Not coincidentally, confidence in the U.S. has reached a two-year low.  When things are bad, we latch on to easy answers.  For many, it's easy to suspect the worst of someone, even a president, we may not particularly like at the moment.  Policy reasons are hard, so we use something simpler and easier -- a heuristic, as social scientists would say -- and good ones are that Obama is secretly Muslim.  Or born elsewhere.  Or the Anti-Christ.  Or whatever.

As the theory of motivated reasoning suggests, we often believe what we want to believe.  Or as the article I linked to in the previous sentence says: "our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that’s highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about."

And it's easier.  Faster.  And in many ways, satisfying because we have a bad guy to blame.

But let's face it.  The only reason the movement has been trending up is Trump and a handful of others playing this tune, over and over, to the joy and chagrin of journalists.  It's a fun story.  But it's the wrong story.

Studying Tea Baggers II

I blogged previously about how scholars might go about studying the tea bag movement, at least with a survey approach, and along the way I rattled off some possible ways we might measure self-identification as a tea bagger, or at least as a sympathizer with the movement.

We could ask folks if they consider themselves part of the movement in a yes-no format, but that's unsatisfying.  We could ask them how closely they identify with the movement and get some 1-to-7 scale to provide more statistical power.   We could ask about some tea bag movement favorite topics (big government, socialism, birther issues about Obama, etc.), but I'm not sure we could capture, or afford to capture, all the issues both serious and wacky that causes individuals to identify with the movement or attend rallies.

What I failed to get into earlier was the media angle to such research.

The obvious one is where people get their news.  We'd offer all the favorites, from Fox to CNN to Limbaugh to Letterman, your basic measures of media exposure.  But I'd also want measures of attitudes toward the news media because I suspect we'd find a lot of interesting explanatory power in those "trust" items.

I'd want to go deeper.

I'd create a matrix in which respondents compared major news sources against one another.  How much is CNN like Fox?  CNN like MSNBC?  CNN like the major broadcast networks?  Etc. etc.  In other words, pick a good dozen likely news sources and -- I admit this would take forever in a phone survey -- compare each item against all the others.  The end result?  Multidimentional scaling would take the data and paint us a pretty picture of how tea baggers versus, I suppose, non-baggers, view the mediaverse.  You could do this in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space.  This is kinda cool stuff -- which proves my inner-geek, but also informative at how folks organize the media world in their heads.

Of course that's too many questions for an ANES survey, which honestly would struggle in a pool of a couple of thousand randomly selected folks to get more than a coupla hundred tea baggers.  So that's out.  This calls for going into the field, to those wacky rallies, and wrestling down some respondents.

The results would be fascinating.

By Radio News I Mean ...

In research we often ask what I call global media exposure questions. You know, how often (or how many days) do you watch television news or read a newspaper. Generic questions, used for decades, and questions growing less and less useful. A lot of surveys now use "paper newspapers" and ask about Internet news sites. That's a nice improvement, but more and more surveys also ask about specific network use (Fox, MSNBC, etc.) or even down to the program level (The O'Reilly Factor, etc.).

Here, I'm talking about radio news.

When we ask someone how often they get their news from radio, consider what might be going through their minds? NPR? Those bits of news between music? Talk radio? The generic question is too, well, generic. It fails to capture the highly segmented nature of radio news.

Allow me to prove my point with some analyses I'm in the middle of and should be finishing instead of writing this. Let's look at belief in conspiracy theories. I'm looking at four -- two from the left and two from the right.

• Theories from the Right: The "birther" belief that Obama was born outside the U.S. and that the health care law contained "death panels."

• Theories from the Left: That the government knew in advance of 9/11 and that the feds directed Hurricane Katrina flood waters into poor New Orleans neighborhoods on purpose.

Yeah, both are nuts and you have to be a certain level of kooky to believe in them. Let's set that aside to examine my point that measuring a generic form of news exposure (radio news) fails to capture what we really mean when we answer a question like that. Below I have the four conspiracy theories and three radio measures. The first is just Radio, the generic measures. The second is to NPR, the third to Rush Limbaugh. As a nerd alert, these results are from regressions, so that means I've statistically controlled for the explanatory power of lots of other factors, such as party ID or ideology. In other words, it's the unique contribution of listing to these radio sources to the model. If you'd like the beta weights, lemme know. I can nerd them to you.

Radio Exposure: Generic exposure is mostly not related to any of the theories except the one about the death panels.

NPR: Listening to NPR makes you less less likely to believe in any of the theories, be they from the left or the right.

Rush Limbaugh: Listening to Limbaugh makes you more likely to believe the anti-Obama conspiracy theories and less likely to believe the leftish theories.

So when we ask about generic radio, we're missing a lot. Look at the NPR listeners, they're less likely to believe in any of this stuff. Of course the audience for NPR is better educated, but I controlled for the impact of education (and age, and income, and other stuff). Limbaugh's effect, even beyond these controls and even controlling for ideology and partisanship, still makes listeners more likely to believe the anti-Obama stuff and less likely to believe the anti-Bush stuff. Radio itself? Not much going on, which suggests by relying on a generic measure you can lose a lot of explanatory power.

What's different about these audiences, even after statistical controls? The Limbaugh audience is more anxious about their financial situation, the NPR audience less so. Anxiety and uncertainty can play a direct role in believing in conspiracy theories of any kind, not necessarily partisan ones.  That may be the clue here, one that deserves further study.

Trump and the Birthers

There's a PPP poll out that's gotten some attention out in the wild world of cable news (and some wacky news sites).

First, overall, 44 percent of Republicans in this survey believe Barack Obama was born outside the U.S. That's higher than usual. Over half (54 percent) think Obama is Muslim. That's high too. I've written extensively, and conducted actual research, on both topics. But what's fascinated some folks is the analysis of Donald Trump supporters. I even heard this reported today on Morning Joe, thankfully with some skepticism. Here it is:

• Sixty-one percent of Trump supporters believe Obama was born outside the U.S.
• Sixty-six percent of Trump supporters believe Obama is Muslim.

Wow. But let's do the math. Set aside the Dems, who aren't that interesting. The survey was of 572 Republican likely primary voters. So if Trump has 29 percent, that means an N here of about 166 respondents. That's a really small number to base a result on. Indeed, if you did into the crosstabs at the bottom of the link I provided above, you'll see stuff reported for candidates with only a handful of supporters. For example, 100 percent of Jim Gilmore supporters believe Obama is Muslim. All six of them, if my math is right.

I also worry, a little, about question order effects. If the questions were asked as presented (and they may have been randomized, it's hard to tell), then the questions about Obama followed a series of questions asking if you're a member of the Tea Party or are an evangelical Christian. Could these prime a different response to the Obama birther/religion questions? Perhaps. Which may explain the somewhat inflated numbers above, but those numbers may also simply reflect a more conservative voter who participates in primaries, versus general elections.

No Donald Trump? 2012 Just Got More Dull

Of course we are all shocked, shocked, to discover Donald Trump will not seek the presidency.  Or as the lede in the NYTimes says today: "Donald Trump fired himself."

The 2012 race got a lot duller.  Yeah, we still have Gingrich.  But Palin is undecided, as is Bachmann.  If both of those get in the race, life as a political blogger just got easier.

Trump's rise, and fall, has been fascinating to watch as he rode the "birther" movement to its logical conclusion.  In a heavy dose of bullshit, Trump said: “I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and ultimately, the general election.  Ultimately, however, business is my greatest passion, and I am not ready to leave the private sector.”  Translation: "I could win if I wanted to. So there."

Thank God for Rick Perry

Republican presidential hopeful Gov. Rick Perry has come through for me -- raising subtle doubts about Barack Obama's birth certificate.  I here I was, afraid the birthers were gone. 

Why do I care?  First, it's just so much fun, this whole birther thing.  Second, I've done research on the birthers that is now sitting at an academic journal awaiting reviews.  Any publicity about birthers, from a strictly personal point of view, is good publicity.  Makes my research all the more relevant.

In other words, it's all about me me me.

Now if Donald Trump would only re-enter the race.  Or Donald Duck.  And that I'm-not-a-witch chick, too. 

Obama and the Birthers

Mitt Romney may have just gotten my vote.

Today Romney joked in Michigan that "no one's ever asked to see my birth certificate," an obvious reference to the birther movement's doubts about President Barack Obama.

Why does Romney's comments make me so happy?  Because I've done quite a bit of research -- some of it published, some of it at a journal awaiting acceptance -- about myths and misperceptions about Obama.  You know, the Muslim thing.  The birthplace thing, which I've written about a lot.  By keeping the nutjob flame alive, Romney keeps my research relevant and current.  Thank you, Mr. Governor.  I very much appreciate it.

The More You Know, the More You Don't Know?

The more Republicans know about the politics, the more likely they believe in political conspiracy theories.This conclusion comes from an article in Mother Jones and relies on a survey conducted last month.  More on that survey in a moment.

Here's the crux of the article:

Among Democrats and independents, having a higher level of political knowledge was correlated with decreased belief in conspiracies. But precisely the opposite was the case for Republicans, where knowledge actually made the problem worse. For each political knowledge question that they answered correctly, Republicans' belief in at least one conspiracy theory tended to increase by 2 percentage points.

The article's author, Chris Mooney, knows his stuff.  He suggests the reason may in part have to do with a conservative's greater need for "cognitive closure" and a need for certainty. A reasonable hypothesis, but I'd counter it has more to do with the nature of the conspiracies examined in the survey.  The two "conservative" conspiracies are about Obama specifically, the two "liberal" conspiracies have to do with Bush stealing the 2000 election and "The Truther" movement about 9/11.

Equivalent?  I'm not convinced.  But let's turn to the survey itself, a national poll of 814 registered voters conducted in December 2012.  First, despite the claim, it's really a survey of people who say they're registered voters, but that's a methodological quibble.  Political scientist Dan Cassino, who runs the Fairleigh Dickinson University poll, says "birther" conspiracy theory is likely to believed more than others because "it's been discussed so often." 

Yup.  Two myths are anchored on Obama, are more recent, and received lots of mainstream media play -- mostly attempts to debunk them.  I'd add here that there's a growing body of research that suggests attempts to debunk myths actually adds to their believability for some people, so I'd be damned cautious about arguing politically knowledgeable Republicans are more likely to believe "their" favorite myths compared to politically knowledgeable Democrats and "their" favorite myths.

And here's a point from Cassino's press release that doesn't comfortably fit the Republicans-are-evil-and-dumb narrative -- young African-Americans are more likely than whites to believe in conspiracy theories.  Not sure how the hell you explain that one.  Would you even want to try?  Not me.

If we buy this set of conspiracy theories are equivalent (debatable) and if we buy into how the survey measures political knowledge (can't tell from the release), then the results raise a number of questions. 

Allow me to get a bit PhDweebish below. 

Greater political knowledge should result in less belief in conspiracies, but hold on.  The theory of motivated reasoning suggests partisans, even knowledgeable ones, will be more likely to believe such myths.  That's all partisans, not just one side of the divide.  Essentially, people believe what they want to believe, especially when it's negative about someone they disagree with or dislike.  So I maintain the Obama-anchored questions are not equivalent to the "truther" and "stolen election" questions.  The latter are from several years ago, myths that received less mainstream news play by comparison -- and certainly damn little near the time the survey was conducted. This can skew your results.

Perhaps, and only perhaps, the Mother Jones article is a textbook instance of motivated reasoning, of seeing and believing what you want to believe -- in this case, about Republicans.

Conspiracy Theories ... Still Out There

Politico ran a story today about conspiracy theories that's worth a read if you're into them (as I am). It also got me thinking, so I dipped into my own data for some quick analyses. Who believes in a particular conspiracy theory? Basically, those who want to believe in a particular conspiracy theory.

So let's look at four popular theories below, two that you might call getting oxygen from the right, two from the left. The wacky right has Obama born outside the U.S. (birther thing), and the so-called "death panels" of Obamacare. The wacky left has the notion the government knew in advance about 911, and the idea Hurricane Katrina's flood waters were purposely aimed at poor sections of New Orleans.

This is what I did (nerd warning). I constructed four quick-and-dirty regression models on each of the four conspiracies above. That means I tossed a kitchen sink full of things into a model to let them fight it out and see which ones remain statistically significant, which are posers and drop out. Let's look at the results:

• Obama born outside U.S. -- Believers tend to be older, less educated, of lower income, female, read less newspapers, but more politically conservative and Republican. Also, even after all these statistical controls, watching Fox News made you more likely to believe this.

• Death Panels -- Believers tended to be younger, less educated, of lower income, Republican and conservative. Also, less likely to read a newspaper but, yes, Fox News watchers. Even after all these controls.

• Government Knew of 911 -- Believers were younger, less educated, of lower income (seeing a trend here?), non-white, less likely to read newspapers, less likely to watch Fox News, more liberal and more likely Democrat.

• Government Directed Katrina at Poor -- Believers were younger, less educated, lower income (sigh, yes), were more likely women, black, liberal, used less Internet news but read newspapers more, and less likely to watch Fox News.

What gives fuel to a conspiracy theory? Looking at the results above, it's a combination of two factors. Consistently, theories from the wacky left and the wingnut right are believed by those of lower socio-economic status. The second factor is quite simple -- people believe what they want to believe. In this case, liberals tend to believe theories that made George W. Bush look bad, conservatives tend to believe theories that make Barack Obama look bad.

Fox News deserves special mention. Even after a host of statistical controls, some of which were not significant in the models after all this other stuff is considered, watching Fox News is consistently related toward believing the anti-Obama stuff and not believing the anti-Bush stuff. Other media factors come and go, but Fox News is a special case.

Barack Obama -- Still a Muslim

In the 2016 ANES pilot study there's one of my favorite questions -- whether Barack Obama is Muslim. Yes, I've researched and published on this before. These are national survey data collected in January 2016.

So, yes, Obama is still Muslim. At least in the minds of many.

A third of respondents said he's Muslim (33.5 percent). That's the bad news, but to be honest it's a number largely unchanged over several years of surveys. The good news is is two-thirds of folks think otherwise. What's interesting about the 2016 pilot survey is it asks people their confidence in their belief. These answers could range from "extremely sure" to "not sure at all" (4 possible answers).

• Among respondents who say he's Muslim, a quarter of them are "extremely sure" and another quarter are "very sure." The most folks are in the "moderately sure" category.

• Among respondents who say he's not Muslim, almost half are "extremely sure" (the biggest number in any category) and another 14 percent are "very sure."

In other words, those who think he's Muslim are a less sure of their answer than those who think he's not Muslim.

If it's any consolation, those who think he's Muslim do worse on a 3-question political knowledge index than those who do not think he's Muslim (significant at the p<.001 level, for you statistical nerds out there). Whites were more likely to say he's Muslim, blacks less so.  Nearly 60 percent of Republicans believe he's Muslim, and over a third of independents think so. That last one is kinda interesting. Also, people who dislike Muslims are more likely to say Obama is one, by a huge margin. But those who like Trump are far more likely to believe Obama is Muslim. No surprise there, Trump being a big birther.

Obama is Muslim

I've published on the misperception that Barack Obama is Muslim (Journal of Media and Religion, 2010).  While searching the net I came across this paper, much more sophisticated than my own, that attacks the same question using implicit and explicit measures of racism and the statistical magic of structural equation modeling.  I find the following very compelling:

Predispositions such as ideology, partisanship, and even race affect how individuals feel about Obama. This evaluation, in turn, motivates individuals to believe misinformation about the President, which creates implicit associations between Obama and Islam in long-term memory. Finally, these automatic associations increase the likelihood of perceiving and explicitly stating that Obama is likely a Muslim. Interestingly, political sophistication mitigates explicit associations, but it has no effect on implicit ones.

There's a lot to like about this study, the top reason being it cites me, but it's also quite complex in its methodological approach.  Some might quibble with the measure of political sophistication, which to me looks a whole lot like knowledge.  Here's the endnote on this point:

The political sophistication scale (M = 0.57, SD = 0.26; KR20 = 0.70) consisted of correct responses to the following items (correct answers and proportions in parentheses): 1) Responsibility to determine constitutionality of laws (Supreme Court; 74%); 2) Harry Reid’s job (Senate Majority Leader; 28%); 3) majority needed to override presidential veto (2/3; 64%); 4) more conservative party at national level (Republican Party; 92%); 5) current number of Supreme Court justices (9; 49%); 6) Hillary Clinton’s job (Secretary of State; 63%); 7) Constitutional authority to declare war (Legislative branch; 51%); and 8) name of current Supreme Court Chief Justice (John Roberts; 34%).

As you can see above, it's basically a measure of knowledge.  There's some debate, not really touched on in this paper, about how exactly one conceptualizes and measures sophistication.  Knowledge is adequate but, to me, not sufficient -- it fails to capture motivation as well as ability (indeed, a standard surrogate for motivation is political interest, also missing in the model).  Then again, I'm a mass comm guy, so I'd like to see news exposure/attention built into either the sophistication index or as a standalone variable.

But political scientists hate media variables.

When it comes to news, however, they're not above discussing the media even if they're necessarily included in their models.  Near the end of the piece comes this bit:

Many partisans tacitly and sometimes explicitly support misinformation by publicly questioning Obama’s faith, or at a minimum fail to correct those who do not. And since, Islam has been portrayed negatively, particularly since the September 11th attacks, the media share at least some of the blame, as many news outlets linked Muslims with terrorism. Some radio and television commentators were direct in drawing this association, while others were more subtle, inferring such a relationship through coverage omissions or photographic selection of terrorists such as Osama bin Laden (Jackson 2010).

So the media can have an impact.  We're just not going to study it.

Yeah, snarky. I don't mean to sound condescending.  This is an excellent study, methodologically above anything I'd try (then again, I have two brothers-in-law who are world class PhDs in biostatistics who call structural equation modeling little more than smoke and mirrors). It's a great piece of work, saved to my appropriate folder as I wrestle with an Obama-birther study.

And yes, that one includes media variables.  End snark (for the moment).

Obama, Birthers, and Donald Trump

The political chattering class is abuzz about Donald Trump's surprising strength among those seeking, or who may seek, the Republican presidential nomination.  Now I find Trump as entertaining as the next guy, and his surprise 17 percent showing, good enough for a tie at second place for the GOP nomination pool, is almost as much fun as him apparently sending investigators to Hawaii to see if Barack Obama was really born there.

Birthers, those who doubt Obama was born in the U.S., are equally entertaining.  But don't underestimate their numbers.  One recent poll found as many as 20 percent believe he was born somewhere other than the U.S., and 31 percent of Republicans think so.  In other words, one-in-five Americans are a bit kooky on this topic, and nearly one-third of Republicans are.  The Donald is on to something.  Not necessarily the truth, mind you, but a shameless play to his audience, those likely to participate in a Republican nomination.  I really see Trump surprising some folks.

By the way, the whole where was Obama born thing was settled long ago by that terrific web site devoted to debunking urban myths -- snopes.  Trump could have saved money by just clicking on the web site rather than "sending" investigators to Hawii to interview, I dunno, no one.  But he's got money to spare.  If he'd like to send me to Hawii to investigate then I'm willing to go on his dime too.

Yo Donald.  Call me.

From a theoretical perspective -- yeah, you knew I'd go there -- belief in the birther movement is reminiscent of those who believe Obama is Muslim. Basically these are people who want to believe the worst in a guy they politically disagree with.  No amount of correcting information will change this (I've blogged on this before, just search for it or motivated reasoning on my blog).  Even corrections will move the partisans further to the edge of sanity (far left, far right, you pick it).

Still, Donald.  Call me.