A Public Policy Polling survey inexplicably asked the question, “Who do you think deserves more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?”
Not surprisingly, Obama did very well on this question, getting more credit than his not-the-president opponent from 63% of the respondents. Another 31% weren’t sure and 6% gave Romney the edge.
You can’t make this up.
Update (Doug Mataconis): I used Twitter to ask PPP what the purpose of the question was, their response pointed me to a Tweet from early this morning after the poll was released:
The reason for the Osama bin Laden question was to see if Republican voters would give credit to Obama for anything. Evidently answer is no
— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) September 10, 2012
I can’t say I’m all that impressed with the response. Asking an inherently silly question doesn’t necessarily tell us much of anything, because we don’t know how many people may have responded with the obviously wrong answer just to mess with the poll. I know that if they’d called me and that question had come up, my reaction would have been to laugh hysterically and then, possibly hang up because obviously they couldn’t have been serious. Ask serious questions, pollsters, not nonsense.
