FOX News Poll: More Than Half of Americans Believe Obama Doesn’t Share Views of Pastor Wright
Barack Obama, who is trying to move on from discussion about his former pastor, speaks about Iraq and the economy Thursday at the University of Charleston in West Virginia. (AP Photo)
By Dana Blanton
Fifty-seven percent of Americans do not believe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama shares the controversial views of his former spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright, while about one in four (24 percent) believes he does share the Rev. Wright’s views. And a sizable minority has doubts about Obama because of his pastor’s comments, according to a new FOX News poll.
Republicans (36 percent) are more likely than independents (20 percent) and Democrats (17 percent) to think Obama shares Wright’s controversial and unpatriotic views. Whites (25 percent) are more likely than blacks (15 percent) to think so.
Over a third of voters (35 percent) and a quarter of Democrats (26 percent) and independents (27 percent) say Obama’s relationship with Rev. Wright has caused them to have doubts about him. Here the racial breakdown is stark: 40 percent of whites and 2 percent of blacks have doubts.
“One of the hallmarks of Obama’s campaign has been his ability to attract independent voters. This doubt brought on by the Wright controversy has to be troubling for Obama,” said Ernest Paicopolos, principal of Opinion Dynamics Corp.
Click here to see the poll results and read the full story.
It’s unclear how much damage, if any, the situation will do to Obama’s standing in his head-to-head race with Hillary Clinton, as Democrats so far are still almost evenly divided in their preference: 40 percent say they want Clinton to be the nominee and 38 percent want Obama. In February, the vote preference was tied at 44 percent each.
All in all, Americans think your choice in friends says a lot about you: Almost 7 of 10 say they think the people you choose to be your friends reflect on you and your values. And 39 percent say your friends reflect on you “a lot.”
Rev. Wright was Obama’s pastor and spiritual adviser for many years, and performed Obama’s wedding ceremony in 1992.
Most Americans — 72 percent — are familiar with the comments made by Obama’s former pastor.
Obama gave a speech on race in America in which he addressed Rev. Wright’s comments on March 18. Opinion Dynamics Corp. conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News from March 18 to March 19 in the evenings. The poll has a 3-point error margin.
Fox News you should be ashamed of yourselves. I had no idea who Rev. Wright was until now, those sound bites you have use is a weak attempt to smear a good canadate. I watch the Rev. sermons and not one thing was racist. He uses historical facts and “footnotes”. STOP IT let American come together and heal stop wite the race card.
how can anyone make an accurate informed decision based on 15 sec. sound bytes that the media has taken from sermons over several years. we need to ask not only ourselves but the media to show all of the sermon where those sound bytes came from.
They’ve scoured 10, 20 years of tapes and found a few minutes of mania, mania which Obama didn’t even witness first hand. With what we know, any other controversial remarks were few and far between, the kind of thing many of us have witnessed in various crowds, though more likely from the opposite viewpoint.
That an old black guy might actually have moments when he buys into a conspiracy theory, racial or otherwise (let’s not forget the syphlis experiments, etc., that did happen), is not so startling or offensive. That he might see “violence begets violence” blowback involved in 9/11 is not so startling or offensive, except perhaps to those who believe US hegemony continues to be a form of manifest destiny. The occasional “Goddamn America” is not nearly so offensive or disconcerting to me than persistent, powerful hate speech from evangelicals and the end-times politics that exists in DC and treats our nation as a Biblical pawn. That’s “Goddamn the whole world and end it now!” That IS real and disconcerting and offensive, and Hillary is connected to that through The Family.
Moreover, the few minutes of mania expressed by Wright during his lifetime, at least part of which involved quoting a white guy from the day after 9/11, is nothing compared to the hatred you would hear in one week in the words of Dobson, Robertson, Hagee, etc., against the communities and organizations they revile and the America that tolerates them.
Let’s maintain perspective about Wright. As HRC likes to say, let’s get real.
Also, Obama’s approach helps underscore the fact that, contrary to what HRC and the right-wing are saying, HIS references to race have always been in the context of response to something from the HRC campaign and the media. He has tried to campaign on everything but race. They try to accuse him of using race to his advantage, when really he is simply responding to their efforts to make it a disadvantage.
You people have troubling issues. Come this fall we will see what prevails, envy, anger, hatred or HOPE!!! Meanwhile, i will continue to read this blog stained by people who wasnt voting for OBAMA anyway from the get go, and just chuckle to my self…. OBAMA for president.