According to “First Read“:

*** Mitt’s speech worked; does Obama now need to give one? Despite once leading both Iowa and New Hampshire and spending millions in the process, Romney had never popped in the national polls — until now. His 20% is a nine-point increase since November. The reason for his movement, of course, has to be the highly publicized speech on faith he gave earlier this month. A full 60% of respondents in the survey could identify Romney’s religion; all but 1% answered correctly. The question was open-ended and folks were not prompted with choices, making the 59% of folks answering correctly more remarkable. Was the purpose of that speech as much about raising his national profile as it was appealing to religious Republicans? And does Obama need to give a similar speech, especially if he becomes the Dem nominee? On a similar open-ended question, just 17% correctly identified Obama as being a Protestant (Church of Christ), 2% said he’s Catholic, 8% said he’s a Muslim, and a whopping 70% said they weren’t sure or refused to answer. Also, the poll measured various presidential peccadilloes, including whether past cocaine use is a problem: 51% said it shouldn’t disqualify someone from being president; 36% said it should. By the way, the biggest potential problem for a candidate would be IRS issues.

UPDATE: Readers make a correction: “Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ. Thompson is connected to the Church of Christ. These are two distinct (and in my view massively different) groups.”