First, let’s dispense with the boring stuff.
As folks get ready to head into the voting booth Tuesday, a new poll of 600 likely Republican voters says there’s not a clear leader in the Alabama Republican presidential primary. In the Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey, which was conducted over the weekend, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received 31 percent of the vote, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum got 30 percent, former U.S. House Speaker New Gingrich landed a close third with 28 percent of the vote and Texas Congressman Ron Paul received nine percent, with two percent undecided.
As Romney’s one-point and three-point leads over Santorum and Gingrich, respectively, are within the 4 percent margin of error for the poll, there’s not really much to be gleaned from this poll except that it predicts tight results on Tuesday night.
Speaking of, what are you doing Tuesday night? Perhaps you’d like to join the Weld crew for a little Alabama election results live-blogging?
Now that we’re done with that, let’s move on to the fun stuff. According to the same poll, likely Alabama Republican primary voters are overwhelmingly evangelical Bama fans who like Rush Limbaugh and the Alabama immigration law, HB56, don’t believe in evolution and are fine with miscegenation. And a large chunk of them think Obama is a Muslim.
Let’s break down the results. 68 percent of respondents said they were evangelical Christians, and 58 percent said they were Alabama fans, versus 28 percent for Auburn.
Amazingly, 14 percent responded that they were “not sure” if they were an Alabama or Auburn fan.
A whopping two-thirds of folks — and these folks, again, are just likely Republican primary voters — said they think HB56 is a “good thing,” versus 22 percent who said it’s a “bad thing” and 12 percent who said they weren’t sure. Similar numbers believed interracial marriage should be legal (it is, of course). Slightly more than half had a favorable opinion of Rush Limbaugh.
When asked if they believed in evolution, 60 percent of the poll’s respondents said no, 26 percent said yes, and 13 percent said they don’t know.
And a surprising 45 percent said that they think U.S. President Barack Obama, a practicing Christian, is a Muslim. And 41 percent said they don’t know what Obama’s religion is, while 14 percent got the answer right and said he was a Christian.
PPP was founded in 2001 by Democratic pollster Dean Debnam, and operates out of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Oh yeah, and things are very similar in Mississippi. (Scroll down to page 33 on the document embedded below to see the Mississippi results).
