Polls like this range WIDELY over years and even across different polls in the same year. I read the paper and it is not clear how the poll was conducted or how the questions were phrased, so it's not wise to read
too much into it.
Edit: Here is how they were phrased and the results. [Note: what does "real" mean? That skews these results as they are definitely real in some sense, but not scientifically.
Belief in cryptids was measured by asking respondents whether they strongly believed, believed, disbelieved, or strongly disbelieved the following statements:
“Bigfoot is a real creature” (12% strongly believed,34% believed, 35% disbelieved, and 20% strongly disbelieved),
“Mermaids are real” (11%, 22%, 42%, and25%, respectively),
“The Yeti, also known as the abominable snowman, is real” (12%, 29%, 39%, and 20%,respectively), and
“The Loch Ness Monster is a real creature” (10%, 31%, 39%, and 20%, respectively).
On the other hand, cryptids are more popular than ever. So, that does correlate to how people will respond to a question of "belief". What does that mean exactly? Are they convinced based on what they have seen in the media (news and documentary portrayals)? Or are they using the availability heuristic (they have heard about it, so there must be something to it).
I have to give it another read and compare to previous surveys.
Coincidentally, another
US survey recently reported the following:
Among those surveyed, 56.9 percent said they believe in aliens, 61.4 percent believe in ghosts, and 70.3 percent say they believe in the devil, which is lower than the 85.4 percent who say they believe in God.
These numbers are also on the
very high end. I think that reasonably correlates with news and reality-based television (I use that term with hesitation). There is no doubt that we are seeing not only an effort to depict aliens and cryptids as real experiences but people who appear credible are putting these ideas out there. Your mileage may vary, but for me, this is just another wave of popular belief. It reflects the cultural milieu; it doesn't reflect any better evidence for these entities to actually exist.