… PPP asked [Ohio] voters who they thought deserved more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden: Obama or Romney. 63 percent said Obama, 31 percent weren’t sure, and 6 percent said Romney.
The results for Republican voters were even more astonishing. 38 percent said Obama, 47 percent weren’t sure, and 15 percent said Romney. What the heck is going on?
My best guess is one dash psychological trickery, and a healthy portion of sampling error. There’s a huge literature in political science on the extent to which surveys like this capture true public opinion, and another literature on the extent to which peoples’ ideologies affect their interpretation of objective fact, and both do a lot to explain the Romney-killed-bin Laden finding. [cont.]
Dylan Matthews, Washington Post