Political Irony

Public Policy Polling decided that since Stephen Colbert tried (but failed) to get his name on the South Carolina ballot, the very least they could do would be to include his name on their latest survey in the state, to see how he might have fared.

Even though he is not really running for president (at least, not yet) he received an impressive 5% from primary voters. That’s more than Jon Huntsman (4%) and Buddy Roemer (1%) and not that far behind Ron Paul (8%) and Rick Perry (7%), but less than Mitt Romney (27%), Newt Gingrich (23%), and Rick Santorum (18%).

Since South Carolina has an open primary, Democratic voters could show up to vote for him. PPP thinks that he could possibly nab 10-15% of the vote, putting him in the top tier of Republican candidates.

Colbert also tried to put a non-binding referendum on the same ballot, asking if corporation are people or only people are people. PPP asked the same question in their survey, and found that only 33% of likely voters think that “corporations are people” while 67% think “only people are people”. Ironically, even though it was Romney who famously declared that corporations are people, two-thirds of his supporters disagree.