Shocking news: “natural born citizen” poll

Coincidence is high with me a YouGov contributor who was arguing with Devvy Kidd in email today about what “natural born citizen” means (she’s a disciple of Donofrio and Apuzzo) and a new poll from YouGov on this very topic (they didn’t ask me).

It turns out that the answer depends a lot on your politics, but overwhelmingly (77%) Americans would classify President Obama as eligible. Here is the YouGov summary page, but I prefer the details. Only a plurality say that a child born in the US to two non-citizen parents is eligible (47% yes, 40% no and 13% not sure).

A majority (61%) believe that someone born overseas to two US Citizen parents is eligible, but if that is reduced to one parent, then it drops to only about 30% for eligible.

There is a certain flakiness factor in the results, given that only 91% believe that a child born in the United States to two citizen parents is eligible (with 5% saying “no” and 4% “not sure”). Also 6% say that someone born outside the US to no US citizen parents is eligible (and 7% not sure).