A poll released Tuesday by Public Policy Polling reveals that an estimated 37 percent of Americans believe that global warming is a hoax.
In all, 1,247 registered voters were polled between March 27-30 and, not surprisingly, a person's answer fell closely with his or her party alignments: in all, 58 percent of Republicans believe it is a conspiracy versus only 11 percent of Democrats.
Climate change, however, was not the only question to fall along party lines.
For example, while 72 percent of Democrats agreed with the statement that "the Bush administration intentionally misled the public about the possibility of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to promote the Iraq War," 73 percent of Republicans did not.
But it doesn't stop there.
As PPP president Dean Deham said in the poll's press release, "Even crazy conspiracy theories are subject to partisan polarization, especially when there are political overtones involved."
This includes whether or not a person believes President Barack Obama is the antichrist (22 percent of those who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 said yes, versus 5 percent of those who voted for Obama), whether the CIA "spread crack in the inner cities" (10 percent Romney, versus 17 percent Obama) and even whether a person believes a secretive, global power elite is conspiring to rule the world under a New World Order (38 percent Romney versus 16 percent Obama).
On the other hand, however, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released its own poll on the subject April 4. This poll found that "69 percent say there is solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the pat few decades" while only 27 percent said no. What's more, of the 69 percent that said yes, 42 percent said that it was mostly due to human activity.
The poll included 1,501 adults from all 50 states and was given a margin for error of 2.9 percent.