even if the results are overstated by 50%, which is certainly not the case, I still think it is appalling that so many self-described Republicans hold views that are indefensible and, yes, just plain crazy.

Reminds me of a remark from the old, great TV show Dr. Katz. Paraphrasing...

Joe told me that his friend Bob told him he makes $100,000 a year parking cars, and that "Even if Bob's lying, he's still making $75,000". Joe will buy anyone's premise, just discount it 25%, as in "That guy over there says he's Jesus Christ; even if he's lying, he's John the Baptist."

Not sure what is meant by "overstated by 50%" and "many" with regard to that poll. Do we have any idea how skewed the sample was -- how far out on the tail end of the normal distribution (the most "extreme" Republicans representing 5% of voters? 10%?) relative to some broader measure (including "weak Republicans" and Republican "leaners") that would be arguably more appropriate measure for the claims or impression given by the results?

That said, I don't have a problem with a pollster screening by simply asking, ask they did, "Politically, do you consider yourself to be a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, or of another party?" as long as they are clear upfront that they excluded anyone who couldn't give a clear answer, even upon being asked a second time if he is able to choose (e.g., someone who said he "leans Republican" but is not willing to choose "Republican" as a self-descriptor), and as long as they clearly distinguish (to respondents and in the reported results and commentary) between being registered with a particular party vs. considering one's self aligned with that party (one can be a registered Republican yet consider himself an independent, and another can be unregistered yet consider himself a Republican).

Who could've predicted that, aside from everybody?

http://cafehayek.com/2010/02/im-not-one-either-but.html

Well, as soon as R2000 does a comparable poll using the same methodology for both screening and answering questions (btw, the yes/no thing is a real problem since many people have in-between perspectives on many issues) for democrats, maybe there's a legitimate discussion to be had.

Bruce, if you don't think Kos commissioned the poll with a purpose in mind, I think you are naive and if you further don't think that these methodology issues and their likely implications were not considered in survey design, you must believe the R2000 people are a bunch of idiots.

The points made about the methodology are pretty basic points as it relates to social science research in general and not just polling in particular. Social scientists will endlessly debate 5 point vs 7 point vs 7 point scales but no attitudinal discussion makes any sense on a 2 point scale.

My take on this is Kos did the poll to prove a point, R2000 made methodology choices consistent with the desired conclusion of the client and this makes the result of the poll overstated. By how much we'll never know nor does it matter. Party identification is not dogma. To argue I need to agree with every person or even 80 percent of the people in my party would substantially end the two-party system.

A poll commissioned by the Daily Kos - gee, who would have suspected.

A lot of polls are crapola, some more than others.

And all we need are left wingers on the other side of the spectrum trying to shape the "new" norm for America. That's even more sad......

I have seen other polls by nonideological organizations showing similar percentages of Republicans as in the Kos poll believe that Obama is not a natural born citizen. That plus my own observations convince me that the Kos poll is essentially correct. One test would be for some other group to ask the same identical questions and see what results it gets.

Asking the same question in the same way would just perpetuate a methodological flaw. Let me take an example from the Kos poll

31 percent of Republicans want contraception to be outlawed.

Well, some people might include the morning after pill in their definition of contraception (indeed this logic has been used by proponents). If I give you a simple yes/no question, how should you answer it? Either answer is wrong if you believe as I stated.

As I said, it's junk polling, not based on sampling (although that's an issue) but based on survey design.

I don't perceive the poll to flawed by not including leaners. In fact it was the intention of the pollsters to understand what party members think rather than moderates and independents that lean Republican but aren't members of the party.

Given Gallup has non-leaner self-identified Republicans pegged at 28% of the electorate this poll represents a significant portion of the entire public. Gallup also runs political affiliation polls regularly, 21 in 2009. So anyone with half a mind that wants to calculate what portion of the country takes these positions has easy access to the math.

If people are surprised by these numbers I'd argue they just haven't been paying very close attention. In some ways consider yourself blessed; I have many conservative friends and family who distribute conservative viral emails as if they were true - they never are. The sort of zaniness showing up in this poll is reflective of what's in those viral emails. For example, I received one recently of a video that presents video "proving" that President Obama is a Muslim carrying out the wishes of the House of Saud while also in league with our mutual enemy - al Qaeda. It even uses footage from The O'Reilly Factor falsely promoting Mr. Obama's supposed fealty to the Saudi royal family.

Let's not forget that 23% of Texas' registered voters thought Mr. Obama was a Muslim in mid-October 2008, just weeks prior to the 2008 Presidential Election. This delusion is not recent, it's just merely more fleshed out with more conspiracies. More Republicans believe in creationism than accept the demonstrated fact of evolution. Republicans are also far more inclined to deny the demonstrated fact of global warming and human's contributions to warming.

The media has become so fragmented that Fox News, by far the most demonstrably dishonest TV news station in the U.S., is the most trusted names in TV news. Republican leaders who are willing to lie to advance their party's electoral chances or criticize the opposition are celebrated and become celebrities; especially if they leverage talking points completely devoid of any principled basis and legacy of success, and therefore with little to no support from functional experts. Currently we're repeatedly exposed to the lie President Obama's Administration distinguishes itself from the Bush Administration because we Mirandized the undie bomber. He's 'lawyered-up' and therefore we're not getting intelligence. In fact we're enjoying considerable cooperation and he's being treated just like hundreds of other terrorists captured in similar circumstances by previous Administrations.

As a Reaganite (though never a conservative) and 29 year member of the GOP until Sarah Palin was nominated as our VP candidate, it pains me to face these realities of what was once a great party which has now allowed its base of crazies to take over to the point it's become incapable of governing. Certainly the Democrats have their idiotic nuts as well; however they comprise a far smaller portion of their party and are marginalized in terms of a lack of power even in their own party. In addition, far left liberals, some of whom are not idiotic nuts, remain marginalized and have been for decades now, e.g., single payer wasn't even considered in the health insurance reform initiatives, neither was a carbon tax in spite of neither being nutty or idiotic, just far left positions. (I don't favor single payer and I support the more Milton Friedman-like fee-and-dividend or similar plan over either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade.)

They don't care who they get votes from, because, as we could see from the Bush II administration, they have no intention of succeeding with any agenda other than privatization. If this collection of oddballs, losers and delusionists were actually sufficient to get them elected, would they then start an impeachment process? Of course not. They'd just continue stalling government to prove that it can't work...leading to more privatization.

And, now that they have 5 corporate-american supreme court justices, the private companies they give the government over to can then spend our tax money, laundered through government contracts, to re-elect the same people who gave them the windfall.

Just don't confuse Republican office-holders with the losers in the poll. They are a tool to be used and nothing more...in a fractured world, loud and stupid gets more attention than thoughtful.

First off, the topic is about the Kos poll and not politics in general but, since you raised it, George HW Bush the privatizing President?

You can't be serious. What did he privatize? He instituted a huge new entitlement program run by the government (Medicare Part D) and created a massive new Federal intervention in education (NCLB).

You characterization of the people who responded to the poll as "losers" is unfortunate for our Republic. It is better to seek to understand and convince than to name call, in my opinion.

If you have nothing better to do than rant, please take it to a site that's more conducive to that type of dialog.

You don't mention any of the corresponding polls of Democrats that find stunning levels of belief among them that Bush blew up the WTC, in UFOs and ESP, that the CIA killed JFK for LBJ, etc. -- and in even more amazing things, such as that rent control increases affordable housing and Social Security is adequately funded for the next 40 years.

Kos didn't mention any of those?

If you wanted to make the true and important point that "it is a fundamental finding of political science and public choice/political economics that the entire electorate is stunningly ignorant and ill informed, and prone to believe impossible things, on a mass scale" then you could have done so, pointing to say Bryan Caplan's recent book The Myth of the Rational Voter. ("The best political book of the year" -- NY Times)

That has really signficant implications.

But to go all Kos and say this just of Republicans, geeeze ... Who wants to be an intellectual derivative of Kos?

There was a poll in New Jersey after the last election that found, quote:
~~~~
"The big surprise here – the group of voters most likely to think Obama is the Anti-Christ are Hispanics, who solidly backed Obama in 2008. Only 58 percent of them say, for sure, that their president is not Satan come to wreak havoc here on earth."
~~~

If you have the nerve to savage an ethinic group, why not go after Hispanics for their double idiocy -- believing Obama is the anti-Christ, and voting for the anti-Christ because he is a Democrat.

Crazy Obama voters.

I mean, c'mon.

... about Bush, and ghosts and reincarnation and UFOs. Quoting:
~~~
Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know ... 26% are not sure. [That's 61% of Democrats, there. Rasmussen. ]
~~~~

The national poll conducted by Opinion Dynamics Corporation shows that about a third of Americans believe in ghosts (34 percent) and an equal number in UFOs (34 percent), and about a quarter accept things like astrology (search) (29 percent), reincarnation (search) (25 percent) and witches (24 percent)...

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they believe in reincarnation (by 14 percentage points), in astrology (by 14 points), in ghosts (by eight points) and UFOs (by five points)...

Women are more likely than men to believe in almost all topics asked about in the poll, including 12 percentage points more likely to believe in miracles...

[Perhaps suffrage was a mistake?]

The one significant exception is UFOs, with 39 percent of men compared to 30 percent of women saying they accept the existence of unidentified flying objects...

Young people are much more likely than older Americans to believe in both hell and the devil. An 86 percent majority of adults between the ages of 18 to 34 believe in hell, but that drops to 68 percent for those over age 70. [Wishful thinking?]
~~~

[Finding in a different poll that the same 34% believe in ghosts, USA Today says: "By 31% to 18%, more liberals than conservatives report seeing a specter."
~~~

Say: "The Myth of the Rational Voter"

To say it about all voters is right on the money.

But to say it about just Republicans is being about as ignorant and irrational as the average voter, at best. Of course, on some peoples' part it is simply dishonest.

Now those polls above actually were impartial. But the Kos poll was produced and designed for Kos, not just reported by Kos.

Does anyone doubt for a moment that a poll with the same purpose produced and designed for a comparable right-wing site would produce a result making Democrats look just as bad? Would you buy it wholesale and post it as a revelation about politics?

Note well, the serious objection to the Kos poll in the critique linked to was not about oversampling, it was about the wording of questions to bias results, and other "disconcerting" departures from recognized best practice.

Famously, a few years back NY and LA Times shockingly reported in Page One Headlines "Poll Finds 1 Out of 3 Americans Doubt There Was a Holocaust", reporting a poll taken for American Jewish Committee.

In the uproar that followed the poll was re-done with the wording corrected, and -- guess what -- the number fell to 2%.

Does anyone really have great faith in the effort Kos takes to avoid such errors?

The purpose of the Kos poll was not to characterize self-described Republicans as nutcases. It was to show the radical opinions and lack of knowledge that the members of the GOP elite are willing to accommodate in their quest for power. It's called who-can-out-tea-party me? Palin, Bachmann, Inhofe, etc. are all in the running. As well as McConnell and Boehner on most days.