Ohio Republicans Give Romney Credit for Bin Laden Death The obvious answer to the question in the headline is no, he doesn't. But Public Policy Polling has a new survey suggesting that six percent of Ohioans, and 15 percent of Ohio Republicans, think Mitt Romney "deserves more credit" for the killing of Osama bin Laden than Barack Obama. How can that be? The Times doesn't generally report on PPP surveys, since that company uses automated questionnaires, which we think may distort results. But I doubt methodological problems are at issue here. It's more likely that some Ohio Republicans are simply proving their partisanship. They don't want to praise the president, even implicitly-by acknowledging a historical fact-so instead they choose the obviously incorrect answer to make a point. In his take on the PPP poll, Dylan Matthews of The Washington Post says that at least some of Romney-got-Bin-Laden respondents are engaging in "psychological trickery," which I assume means the same thing as choosing the incorrect answer to make a point. But he also cites academic studies on partisan bias indicating that ideology affects voters' perception of reality. In one 1988 poll, "voters were asked several questions that were politically relevant, but had objective, factual answers," such as did unemployment go up or down under Ronald Reagan? And did inflation get better or worse during his presidency? The answers, respectively, are it went down and it got better, but Democrats were less likely than Republicans to accept, or at least admit, these facts. In this area, at least, both sides really are at fault.