Stephen Colbert’s comical attempt to snag a spot on the South Carolina primary ballot was not entirely for show: according to one poll, he has 5 percent support in the Palmetto State and a higher standing than Jon Huntsman.
Public Policy Polling, spurred on by the comedian’s tongue-in-cheek efforts to sponsor the South Carolina primary, as well as attempts to get on the ballot and get behind a referendum, decided to put Colbert’s popularity to the test.
PPP announced the results of their poll on Tuesday – Colbert at 5 percent, sixth place, ahead of Huntsman at 4 percent. They also found that 67 percent of the 1,100 respondents — likely Republican voters – support the Comedy Central host’s proposed referendum, which says that “only people are people,” while 33 percent believe “corporations are people too.”
In a news release, the polling firm said: “Our team at PPP decided he couldn’t get all that stuff on the actual ballot, we could at least poll it for him.”
Here are some of the highlights of this goofy poll:
* Colbert only has a 17 percent favorability rating, with 41% finding him “unfavorable,” and 42% “not sure.”
* Among those voters who supported Mitt Romney in the 2008 primary, 1 percent would now go for Colbert. (This is no joke.) But 13 percent of Rudy Giuliani voters from ’08 would cast their vote for Colbert, putting him behind only Newt Gingrich and Romney among Giuliani’s primary voters from four years ago.
* Colbert was favored by 3 percent of women and 6 percent of men.
* Colbert, who is supposed to be hip and edgy, received 2 percent of his support from senior citizens.
* Colbert has 2 percent support from those identifying themselves with the Tea Party – apparently a group of people who don’t get the joke.
The entire polling report is available here at the Mediaite web site, courtesy of Public Policy Polling.
