Following the release of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate — a document skeptics claimed did not exist because Obama was supposedly born in a foreign country — the percentage of Americans who doubt Obama’s citizenship has plummeted, according to two new polls.
In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Thursday, only 10% of Americans said Obama was born in a foreign country. That’s exactly half the percent who said the same last year.
And even among those who doubted Obama’s citizenship, far fewer are quite so confident in that stance now that Obama’s birth certificate has been released. Last year, nine percent of respondents said there was “solid evidence” to prove that Obama was born elsewhere. That number dropped to just one percent in the latest poll.
The biggest change came among Republicans, as 14% now say Obama was born outside America, down 17 points from last April when 31% of GOPers said the same thing.
A PPP poll released earlier this week found a similar drop in the percentage of Republicans who believe Obama was born outside the U.S.
In February, PPP found that just over half (51%) of Republican registered voters nationwide thought Obama wasn’t born in America. In a follow-up poll released this week, that number fell 19 points, to 32%.
Skeptics had been demanding that Obama release his long form birth certificate for years, speculating that the lack of a birth certificate meant Obama could be foreign born, and thus inelegible to serve as president. After the issue was dragged back into the national spotlight this spring — fueled largely by the constant flame-fanning of reality television personality Donald Trump — Obama provided copies of his long form certificate to the press, saying there were more important issues at hand than “a sideshow and carnival barkers.”
The Washington Post/ABC News poll was conducted April 28-May 1 among 1,006 adults nationwide. It has a margin of error of 3.5%. The PPP poll was conducted over the same period among 1,002 registered voters nationwide, and has a margin of error of 3.1%.
