via Alicia M. Cohn, The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room
More Americans are confident in President Obama’s ability to handle an alien invasion than in Mitt Romney’s, according to a new poll released Wednesday.
In a survey conducted for the National Geographic Channel, 65 percent said they’d pick Obama to deal with an invading alien force over Romney. Obama also took the confidence vote among 68 percent of women surveyed, likely a key voting bloc in this scenario as well as in the November election.
In addition, about 79 percent of those surveyed think the government has kept information about aliens and UFOs a secret from the public. Despite that widespread suspicion, only 36 percent actually think UFOs exist, 17 percent don’t, and 48 percent aren’t sure.
The White House is pretty sure, though, and last December officially announced that the government has found “no evidence” of extraterrestrial life and no “credible information” indicating a cover-up.
The rest of the survey revealed how much influence cinema history has on Americans’ ideas about alien life.
Just in case Obama doesn’t come through in the event of an alien attack, 22 percent of those surveyed believed they could attempt to “befriend” extraterrestrial life, much like the children did in Steven Spielberg’s 1982 film “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial”
In addition, 55 percent believe that government agents of the type depicted by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in the movie series “Men in Black” actually exist.
And if all else fails, 21 percent of the Americans surveyed would call on angry, green Marvel character The Hulk — last seen battling, yes, alien invaders in this summer’s blockbuster “The Avengers” — to deal with aliens, while others would look to superheroes Batman (12 percent) or Spider-Man (8 percent), both also appearing in movies later this summer.
The survey was conducted May 21 to 29 with a sample size of 1,114 and a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The Brandt Standard 
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