Internet Explorer 9 does not respect Group Policy Pop-up Blocker exceptions

[Daniel Schmidt1]

I have a domain group policy that specifies sites which are exceptions to the Internet Explorer pop-up blocker, which is apparently not recognized by IE 9. It worked in previous versions.
The policy is User Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer\Pop-up allow list. I am using wildcards: e.g. *.microsoft.com.
Things I have tried:

• Created a new policy with the GPMC after having installed IE 9, thinking it required an ADM update, but with no success.
• gpupdate, gupdate /force, and reboots, of course.
• Verified both the original and new policies are being applied with gpresult /r and rsop.msc
• Cleared all user specified entries from the pop-up exception list
• Manually added one of the sites to the list as a limited user, tested with success, removed it, and the pop-up was again blocked.
• Verified the specified sites are present in HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\New Windows\Allow

Any suggestions?

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