Barack Obama in Israel in 2008. Photo: israelmatzav.

All sorts of claims have been made about U.S. President Barack Obama, but the most recent one might have been the most surprising. In a survey done by the Associated Press, it was reported that a significant number of Americans think that the President is…Jewish. 18% in fact. Except the only problem with the poll was that there was a typo. The actual number of people who think he is Jewish is 0%.

The poll, which surveyed racial attitudes towards the U.S. presidential and vice presidential candidates was picked up by several major news media outlets including Haaretz, The Jewish Chronicle, The Forward, Mediaite, Russia Today and The Nation. The news caused a minor uproar on twitter. One person wrote, “18% of Americans think Obama is Jewish! Really!!!!” His shock was well founded.

When The Algemeiner scanned the survey we realized that the numbers didn’t reflect the reports. A note atop the question that read “**2012 numbers have been updated to correct a typo,” led us to further believe something was amiss. GJK, the Germany-based research firm that conducted the survey on behalf of the AP, confirmed to The Algemeiner that a misalignment caused the error, that it had been corrected, and that 18% of Americans think Obama is Muslim, not Jewish. All of the aforementioned media outlets have failed to make the same correction at the time of publication.

A screenshot showing the correct poll numbers is posted below.

Survey statistics Source: The Associated Press