12 million Americans believe Lizard People Run Our Country!

..About 90 million Americans believe aliens exist. Some 66 million of us think aliens landed at Roswell in 1948. These are the things you learn when there's a lull in political news and pollsters get to ask whatever questions they want.


Public Policy Polling has raised weird polls to an art form. During last year's presidential campaign, the firm earned a bit of a reputation for its unorthodox questions; for example, "If God exists, do you approve of its handling of natural disasters?"


Today PPP released the results of a national survey looking at common conspiracy theories. Broken down by topic and cross-referenced by political preference, the results will not inspire a lot of patriotism. If you need to defend your fellow countrymen, be sure to note that the margin of error is 2.8 percent.


We took the findings and arranged them from most- to least-believed. And, just to inspire additional shame, figured out how many actual Americans that meant must believe in things like the danger of fluoride in water. (28 million, if you're wondering.)




Conspiracy Percent believing Number of Americans believing:

JFK was killed by conspiracy 51 percent 160,096,160
Bush intentionally misled on Iraq WMDs 44 percent 138,122,178
Global warming is a hoax 37 percent 116,148,195
Aliens exist 29 percent 91,035,072
New World Order 28 percent 87,895,931
Hussein was involved in 9/11 28 percent 87,895,931
A UFO crashed at Roswell 21 percent 65,921,948
Vaccines are linked to autism 20 percent 62,782,808
The government controls minds with TV 15 percent 47,087,106
Medical industry invents diseases 15 percent 47,087,106
CIA developed crack 14 percent 43,947,966
Bigfoot exists 14 percent 43,947,966
Obama is the Antichrist 13 percent 40,808,825
The government allowed 9/11 11 percent 34,530,544
Fluoride is dangerous 9 percent 28,252,264
The moon landing was faked 7 percent 21,973,983
Bin Laden is alive 6 percent 18,834,842
Airplane contrails are sinister chemicals 5 percent 15,695,702
McCartney died in 1966 5 percent 15,695,702
Lizard people control politics 4 percent 12,556,562

Just to further inspire conversation, PPP broke down belief in each theory by whom the respondent supported in the 2012 election. This yielded some genuinely interesting results.


For example, only two conspiracies were more commonly believed by Obama supporters: that Bush intentionally misled America about Iraq's WMDs (a massive 69 percent of his supporters believe that one) and that the moon landing was faked. There two theories with equal support among Obama and Romney supporters: that aliens exist and theone about fluoridation. Everything else, from lizard people to vaccines and autism to global warming being a hoax? Believed by more Romney supporters.

No conspiracy was less commonly believed than one suggesting that the government is populated by lizard people. But that's mostly because only 2 percent of Obama supporters believe the theory while 5 percent of Romney supporters do.

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