Opinion polls

A year after the first moon landing, Knight Newspapers conducted a poll of 1721 U.S. citizens and found that more than 30 percent of all of the poll's respondents were "suspicious of NASA's trips to the Moon" with the number rising to over half in some demographic areas. The Newsweek article that published the poll results noted that among the respondents were "an elderly Philadelphia woman who thought the moon landing had been staged in an Arizona desert" and a "housewife" whose suspicions were based on her belief that her television could not "receive signals from the moon." Another respondent said, "It's all a deliberate effort to mask problems at home the people are unhappy  and this takes their minds off their problems."

According to a 1999 Gallup poll, about 6 percent of the population of the United States has doubts that the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon. (Five percent had no opinion, while 89 percent believed the landings took place.) It asked, "thinking about the space exploration, do you think the government staged or faked the Apollo Moon landing, or don't you feel that way?" Six percent of respondents answered "yes, staged. Although, if taken literally, 6 percent translates into millions of individuals," Gallup said of this, "it is not unusual to find about that many people in the typical poll agreeing with almost any question that is asked of them; so the best interpretation is that this particular conspiracy theory is not widespread." A 1995 Time/CNN poll also found that 6 percent of the people believe in a hoax. Fox television's 2001 TV special "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Really Land on the Moon?", airing to 15 million viewers, may have given a boost to the idea, despite the allegation of many errors of fact and presentation in the program by the Web site called "Who mourns for Apollo?". Fox said roughly 20 percent of the public had doubts about the authenticity of the Apollo program after the show.

A Dittmar Associates poll in 2006 showed that among 18-26 year old college-educated students “27 percent expressed some doubt that NASA went to the Moon, with 10 percent indicating that it was ‘highly unlikely’ that a Moon landing had ever taken place.”

James Oberg, an American journalist who writes about space (and has worked for NASA's space shuttle program), estimates that "perhaps 10 percent of the population, and up to twice as large in specific demographic groups" believe in the hoax or have some doubts about the Apollo program. "It’s not just a few crackpots and their new books and Internet conspiracy sites," Oberg said in 1999. "There are entire subcultures within the U.S., and substantial cultures around the world, that strongly believe the landing was faked. I’m told that this is official dogma still taught in schools in Cuba, plus wherever else Cuban teachers have been sent (such as Sandanista [sic] Nicaragua and Angola)." In other sources Oberg has tied these beliefs to larger social phenomena: "Myths have a way of blossoming in the fertile soil of scientific discovery  from the time of the Phoenicians to Marco Polo, and including mermaids and unipeds and all these mythological creatures that lurk at the edge of our exploration."