The week after the 2014 election, Alex Theodoridis at the University of California, Merced, had YouGov ask 1,000 Americans, “There has been a great deal of talk about President Obama’s religious beliefs. Which of these do you think most likely describes what he believes deep down?”
Not many public opinion polls ask respondents to consider what people believe “deep down” (the only other example we could find was a questionably scientific Fanpop online poll asking whether Professor Snape loves Professor McGonagall deep down), and in this case, it seemed to encourage people to question Obama’s Christian faith. Fifty-four percent of Republicans said they believed Obama was a Muslim deep down; 26 percent of Independents and 10 percent of Democrats agreed. “I don’t know” was another popular response.
