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I wonder what percentage of the american population really knows what drones are?

Reminds me of opinions of cars at the turn of the century (1900): "To the average city dweller, the idea of a city oriented around transportation in cars, and especially privately owned cars carrying one or a few people, would have been incomprehensible. Indeed, the modern idea of a street as an artery, existing primarily to convey vehicles, would have been foreign, says Christopher W. Wells, author of Car Country: An Environmental History" (http://nautil.us/issue/7/waste/did-cars-save-our-cities-from...)

What if they asked the same questions but used "electric toy helicopter" instead?
Yes, respondents are almost certainly picturing military strike drones and thinking that people want them for home defense.
It was an online poll, not a real poll with a uniform sample of the population. The "poll" was attached to a new of a moron that crashed a drone into the White House. I'm really surprised that only a 42% of the votes were against private drones.

If we can't have a serious poll, I'd like to see the result if they repeat the same "poll" but attached to this news:

* "Mom with broken leg found 3 years old kid lost in the forest using drone"

* "RC airport cafeterias drop the price to 1/3 using drones to distribute the burritos"

I think you're misreading the article. The poll wasn't "attached" to any news story, a portion of the polling was conducted after the story broke.

It is also completely possible to carry out representative polling over the internet; this poll executed by Reuters and a prominent market research firm, it wasn't a sidebar in a CNN Online post.