Rasmussen released it's report today which states 22 percent of the nation's voters saw McCain's Paris Hilton/Britney Spears/Barack Obama ad as racist, while 53 percent perceived Obama's "dollar bill" comment as racist.
The comment in question is where Barack Obama told a crowd in Springfield, Missouri, "So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He's risky. That's essentially the argument they're making."
That dollar bill remark started a media storm with the McCain campaign accusing Barack Obama of playing the race card from the bottom of the deck and members of the Obama campaign denying it, then admitting that it was partially in reference to his ethnicity with Obama himself stating that his being African American was a small part of what that comment meant.
Rasmussen asked the nation's voters what they thought about the two instances in question, the "Celeb" ad and the "dollar bill" comment and while 22 percent saw the celeb ad as racist, 53 percent of the nation's voters saw Obama's "dollar bill" comment as racist in nature with 38 percent disagreeing.
There were also significant partisan divides. Democrats were evenly divided as to whether the McCain commercial was racist, and they were also evenly divided on the Obama comment. Republicans, by an 87% to 4% margin, rejected the notion that the McCain campaign ad was racist. But, by a 67% to 26% margin, GOP voters believe that Obama’s comment was racist.
Unaffiliated voters, by a five-to-one margin, said the McCain ad was not racist. By a much narrower 50% to 38% margin, unaffiliateds viewed Obama’s comment as racist.
The demographics reported also showed that 58 percent of African American voters saw the McCain ad as racist, 18 percent of white voters saw it that way and 14 percent of all other voters saw it that way.
Obama's comment was seen as racist by 44 percent of African Americans and 53 percent of white voters with 61 percent of all other voters seeing it as racist.
You can see the actual questions asked at Rasmussen.
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