That was my first thought as well. It also seems odd that, since the whole idea of faith is that you can't prove god exists, it would be any controversy to not believe in the stuff that can't be proven.
On the other hand, I don't think the average person really has any sense of what an atheist is. It occupies that place in the popular lexicon like "communist" or "terrorist" where most people just associate it with baby-killers of one kind or another.
One question though: The study cites 3% as the number of people who could be defined as atheists. I seem to remember much larger numbers reported by people on this list (maybe as much as 30%). Are they off in their measurements, defining it differently, or just less prone to exaggeration? Or maybe I'm misremembering.
-s