Has Fox News become my unwitting ally in trying to convince Erick Erickson that many Americans do indeed believe in a literal creationism as outlined in the Bible?

Today Fox News released part of a survey (of 911 Americans), the part dealing with religious implications (prayer, creationism):

Fox News Poll: Most Believe Prayer Heals, 45 Percent Believe in Creationism

Some 45 percent of voters accept the Biblical account of creation as the explanation for the origin of human life on Earth, while 21 percent say the theory of evolution as outlined by Darwin and other scientists is correct. Another 27 percent say both explanations are true.

Most of the Fox write-up isn’t done very well (no surprise), not really tackling the sticky issues of polling.

Here is the summarized polling data for the released section, which contains more details of both the prayer and creationism questions, with answers profiled by the declared status of the questioned.

Looking at the details of the polling results, among self declared as “Tea Party” only 11% accept science. “Republicans” don’t do much better, at 13%.

The Fox questions are ambiguous, intentionally so, I can only conclude. The three options given are:

The theory of evolution as outlined by Darwin and other scientists

The Biblical account of creation as told in the Bible

Are both true

The last one is the curve ball in classic obfuscationist fashion. The category is a catch all, probably intended for everyone from theistic evolutionists (i.e., Biologos folk) to the Old Earth Creationists (e.g., Hugh Ross, and probably Erick Erickson.) Yet it also functions as a “maybe” type of answer, without forcing people to choose the (perhaps shameful in the minds of the questioned) “I don’t know” (which was a possible answer on the poll.)

However, even accepting that, fully half of the “Tea Party” and “Republican” chose the “Bible” category, not the “both”!! That is, half of all the Tea Partying/GOP folk totally reject that science has any part in informing us of origins!

NCSE also has a brief summary about this poll: A new Fox News poll on evolution.

Personally, I wonder about the polling method. For example, the poll says that the under 35 y.o. crowd accepts the Bible-only story at 50% (!!), while the over 65 y.o. is only 43% in that category. This is contrary to every other polling result and counter-intuitive as well.

Overall, I suspect this poll is more of an attempt to legitimize the GOP candidates’ atavism as somehow being mainstream. The reason the partially released survey picked only two questions is that they relate to hot button issues for the Tea Partying atavists:

1. prayer in schools and public places;
2. use of the Bible in schools and public meetings.

After all, if the majority of Americans believe in prayer and the Bible, who are the activist liberal judges who are trying to ban prayer and the Bible? Eh?

As I alluded, the details of the creationism question lead me to wonder about the polling method. About the method, all we get from Fox is this:

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 911 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from August 29 to August 31. For the total sample, it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

“Registered Voters” implies some sort of selection process, and since the youngest adults are less likely to vote than older adults, and since older people are more likely to be at home and willing to have the time to spend in answering a poll, I suspect that the polling results were skewed somewhat more towards the Fox viewing audience.

I expect more details about this poll, and more discussion about its results, will come about later as people start to wonder how 50% of the under 35 crowd could have picked “The Bible” under the origins question.