Nearly A Third Of Americans Still Believe President Obama Is Muslim, New Poll Reveals

President Barack Obama has referred to his Christian faith on many occasions throughout his presidency, but to some Americans, it’s fallen on deaf ears. A CNN/ORC International poll released Sunday reveals that 29 percent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. That number is even higher when you isolate the responses by political party: 43 percent of all those who identify as Republican said the president is Muslim. Among supporters of Donald Trump, 54 percent said they believe he is a Muslim.

More Americans, however, said Obama is a Christian. Among all adults, 39 percent responded that they believe the president is a Protestant or some other type of Christian (except the 4 percent who said Catholic), 2 percent said Mormon, 1 percent said Jewish, while another 1 percent said “something else.”

But 11 percent of Americans said he is not religious at all, while 14 percent said they didn’t know his religious background.

The misperceptions about the president’s religion are much more widespread, however, than those about his birth. The president, who was born in Hawaii, has been challenged by some to provide proof that he was born in the United States. Republican presidential contender Donald Trump raised the issue in 2011, calling for the president to produce his birth certificate. Trump continues to question whether the president was born in the U.S.

But Trump’s allegations don’t seem to have a foothold among most Americans: Eighty percent of those polled said the president was born in the United States. The other 20 percent said he was born outside of the U.S., but only 9 percent believe there is solid evidence.

The poll was conducted Sept. 4-8 and surveyed 1,012 Americans by telephone. Among the respondents, 930 were registered voters. The margin of sampling error for the results is plus or minus 3 percentage points.