Persistence in the Perception of Barack Obama as a Muslim in the 2008 Presidential Campaign

Abstract

A number of Americans persisted in believing a rumor during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign that Barack Obama was Muslim despite news stories, fact-checking Web sites, and Obama's self-professed Christian affiliation. Using a panel study in the last three months of the campaign, this study explores what factors predict who maintained this misperception and whether exposure to the news media, which often attempted to debunk the myth, influenced perceptions. While political and religious conservative beliefs predicted a belief in Obama as Muslim, exposure to the news media did little to moderate this effect.

Notes

¹Obviously I am not arguing that being Muslim, or even being perceived as Muslim, is negative. In this political context, however, it can be argued that among those who held to this misperception, many also considered this religious affiliation either to be negative or as a negative because they thought Obama a Muslim even though he professed to being Christian.

²Individuals without Internet access were provided a free Web appliance and service for the duration of the study. In addition, respondents were offered $10 per month to complete surveys through September 2009.

³The ANES site is www.electionstudies.org.

⁴This is but one method of separating conservative Christians from others. Alternative questions include asking respondents if they self-identify as born-again Christians or probing for specific religious affiliations and recoding those responses along theological lines. The biblical literalism question, although imperfect, is the only one available in the data that taps, in some fashion, differences between conservative and moderate or liberal Christians.

⁵This wording is often used to tap biblical literalism and often as a surrogate to identify conservative Christians. The exact wording of the response alternatives are: “The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally,” “The Bible is the word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word,” and “The Bible is a book written by men and is not the word of God.”

⁶Cronbach's alpha for these four items was at best a disappointing .41 despite moderate intercorrelations. Using the items individually in multivariate analysis resulted in multicollinearity and unexplainable sign changes on regression coefficients; therefore, I used the index despite the low reported alpha. At times, individual media effects are reported to help explain results. In both waves, the mean of the index was 3.7 (SD = 1.5). The correlation between the two waves on media exposure was high (r = .82, p < .001).

⁷These are somewhat higher rates than those seen in other U.S. surveys, most of which were conducted earlier in the campaign and often used only registered voters rather than a sample of all adults.

⁸Specific tests of significance are available from the author. The general political knowledge index was a set of five questions with Cronbach's alpha of .61.

Note. ⁺ p < .10

*p < .05

**p < .01

***p < .001.

⁹Specific mean scores and statistical tests are available from the author.

Note. *p < .05

**p < .01

***p < .001.

¹⁰Some support for this argument is found in a three-way interaction between radio news exposure, education, and political ideology (B = −.01, Wald = 3.0, p < .09) that suggests that among less educated and politically conservative respondents, exposure to radio increased the likelihood to see Obama in November as Muslim.