Mark Blumenthal, the senior polling editor of the Huffington Post, writes:

WASHINGTON — The release of President Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate Wednesday took many observers by surprise. Many pundits questioned the timing and the political wisdom of the announcement, a sentiment White House Communications Director Dan Pfieffer seemed to confirm. He suggest to reporters at that morning’s press briefing that it might have been in the president’s “long-term political interests to allow this birther debate to dominate discussion in the Republican Party for months to come.”
But that may not have been the case. The most recent public polling on the issue shows that, overall, doubts about Obama’s birth had been growing glacially at best, and not at all among independents. While the vast majority of Obama supporters and swing voters give the “birther” theories little credence, the controversy sharply divides Republicans. Moreover, even though release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate is dramatic and unparalleled, it is unlikely to make a significant dent in any of these attitudes.
Here are five key findings from public polling that help put the “birther” issue into perspective:
1) “Birtherism” not widespread and often not a hard belief
Polls on this have produced a consistent finding over the last year or so: Roughly one American in four reports the mistaken belief that the President was born outside the United States. But as former ABC News polling director Gary Langer argues, “[m]any people are expressing their opinion rather than an assertion of factual reality.” For some, he writes, that opinion amounts to an “‘expressed belief’ –- a statement intended to send a message, not claim a known fact.”
The polling results support his argument: An ABC News/Washington Post poll a year ago found that 20 percent believed Obama was born outside the United States, but half of that group said their answer was “suspicion only” (10 percent) rather than a belief based on “solid evidence” (9 percent).
Similarly, on the USA Today/Gallup poll conducted this past week, only 9 percent said that Obama was “definitely” born in another country, while 15 percent said the president was “probably” born elsewhere.
These expressed beliefs are likely not all reflex and partisan cheerleading, as political scientist John Sides argues, but we should take care not to interpret the polling results too literally. The percentages who say they believe Obama was born elsewhere are probably a complex mix of people with actual beliefs and those with intense antipathy to Obama generally.

The rest here.

“Not widespread,” you say? Hmmm. Kind of different than the entire media narrative we’ve been hearing, oh, for the past year or so. But if we’re going with birtherism is no longer “widespread,” as per the HuffPo, I’m good with it.