Research 2000 poll: Only 42% of Republicans believe Obama was born in the US

[ilikeverin]

And only 47% of Southerners... making it the only region of the U.S. with a number below 85%.

Was this poll manipulated to make Southerners look dumb?

Actually I'd say the "Southerners" statistics is the more relevant one.  If the effect were merely:

Republicans->Birthers

The rate of birthers would be higher in the Midwest, where Republicans are outnumbered but are not endangered-species territory, and in the "West", which includes the Mountain West as well as the Pacific Coast.  Instead, the effect seems to be more along the lines of:

Southerners->Republicans
Southerners->Birthers

(or, perhaps, Southerners+Republicans->Birthers)

[ilikeverin]

lol... hardly.

Here the question was "DO you believe Bush knew of the attacks prior to 9/11"... that does not equal "Do you believe the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy by the government which George W. Bush had the knowledge of?" which is what identifying Truthers would involve.  I can guarantee those numbers would be much lower.

The question was whether or not Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance, which is a form of trutherism since it implies complicity. But even if didn't imply complicity, does it matter? This poll didn't say "Do you believe that Barack Obama is constitutionally ineligible to be president because he was not born in the United States and is engaging in a massive cover-up?"

Not quite.  The "do you believe George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks before they happened?" thing also includes responses like "yes, I believe George W. Bush knew an attack was imminent" and "yes, I believe George W. Bush had intelligence that suggested a terrorist attack was going to occur sometime in the fall of 2001".  Knowledge isn't a dichotomy; there are far too many nuances about it to make a good poll question, without seeing how exactly the question was phrased.

Meanwhile, it's hard to imagine a very nuanced "no" result to a question where the answer is much more dichotomous; it's not like Barack Obama could've "kinda" been born in America.