The News Minute | February 27, 2015 | 12.21 pm IST

Around half of all Republicans see American President Barack Obama as “Muslim” a view that appears influenced by his middle name.

Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein, a circumstance that appears to have confused people of all political persuasions in the United States, irrespective of the fact that Obama took his oath of office with his hand on the Bible and has himself declared that he is Christian. 

A report in The Hindu says that these were the findings of a survey conducted last year by Alex Theodoridis, a professor at UC Merced, as a part of a Congressional Election Study. 

One of the questions was: “Which of these do you think most likely describes what Obama believes deep down? Muslim, Christian, atheist, spiritual, or I don’t know.”

While half of Republican respondents thought Obama is Muslim by faith, around 45 percent Democrats said he was Christian and around the same number of Independents said they did not know.