Serious Republicans to Colbert: Report elsewhere
Republicans nationwide have a message for comedian and potential presidential contender Stephen Colbert: Butt out of our GOP race.
Colbert has hinted at trying to join the Republican presidential contest in South Carolina – a threat or suggestion that may not stand up to the truthiness test.
The Poll Position team believes Colbert would win the South Carolina GOP primary in a landslide… if all Republicans in the state were comedians, but we’re officially impartial, and our opinion counts for nothing.
We anted up a ridiculous amount of money to commission a for-real nationwide survey of likely Republican voters to determine whether they’d want Colbert to join the 2012 race for president.
Here’s what we learned: 68% said no, 13% said yes, and 19% expressed no opinion (keeping in mind not necessarily all the 13% saying yes would vote for Colbert).
When Colbert announced last week on his Comedy Central TV “Colbert Report” show he’d explore a presidential run, he surrendered control of his previously established Super Political Action Committee (Super PAC) to fellow comedian Jon Stewart. The Super PAC was re-branded “The Definitely Not Coordinated With Stephen Colbert Super PAC.” Stewart’s Super PAC job title is “President For Life For Now.”
Now the Stewart-run Super PAC is running an anti-Romney commercial in South Carolina – arguably more a mockery of Newt Gingrich’s hard-hitting anti-Romney ads, snippy Super PAC-funded commercials in general, and campaign finance run amok.
It’s unclear whether anyone takes Colbert’s South Carolina presidential campaign exploration seriously, especially since he made no attempt to qualify to be on the South Carolina presidential GOP primary ballot, and write-in votes are not permitted in the primary.
So may “The Force” be with Colbert – clearly his only hope of winning the South Carolina GOP primary this Saturday.
Now, in all seriousness, here follows the mandatory language and crosstabs.
In our national scientific telephone survey, we questioned 541 registered voters who said they’d vote in their state’s Republican primary or caucus. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 4%. The full crosstabs for the poll: Poll Position crosstabs – Colbert.
What do you think? Vote in our online companion poll and comment below.
The online companion poll in which you can vote provides unscientific results, meaning it’s a tally of participating Poll Position users, not a nationally representative sampling.
Poll Position is committed to transparency and upholding the highest professional standards in its polling, explaining why we provide you with the crosstabs of our scientific polls. Crosstabs provide a breakdown of survey participants by age, race, gender, and political affiliation.
You can learn more about our polling methodology here.
