“But guys like us, we don’t pay attention to the polls.”
By
Well, that didn’t take long. Evidently, a Republican polling firm has included Stephen’s name in a national poll, so we now have numbers on just where the candidacy stands among likely voters. From the Washington Post:
Poll Tries to Measure Colbert Effect
Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, recently completed a national poll of 1,000 likely 2008 voters that included Colbert’s name in both the GOP and Democratic primaries. (He has announced his plans to run in both the Democratic and Republican primaries.) In the field from Oct. 18-21, the survey has a 5 percent margin of error.
In the Democratic primary, Colbert takes 2.3 percent of the vote — good for fifth place behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (40 percent), Sen. Barack Obama (19 percent), former Sen. John Edwards (12 percent) and Sen. Joe Biden (2.7 percent. Colbert finished ahead of Gov. Bill Richardson (2.1 percent), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (2.1 percent) and former Sen. Mike Gravel (less than 1 percent).
He was less lucky in the Republican field, where he took less than 1 percent of the vote behind even longshot candidates like Reps. Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani led the Republican field with 29 percent, followed by former Gov. Mitt Romney at 12 percent, former Sen. Fred Thompson (11 percent) and Sen. John McCain (10 percent).
Maybe this is just me, but wouldn’t it be more interesting to see where he stands among voters deemed “unlikely”? I think the real X factor here is whether Stephen inspires people who haven’t previously participated in the political process to get involved.
Anyhow, I suppose it’s interesting, from a theoretical standpoint, to get these numbers. But, as “Stephen” would likely say, “We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in ‘reality.’ And reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
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5 Comments
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
If he’s polling this well nationally they’re bound to include his name more often, especially in SC. What was odd in this poll was that the margin of error was 5%, whereas most national polls put on TV seem to aim for 2-3%.
Boz
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October 22nd, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Looks like the “Colbert Bump” worked better for him than Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel!
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October 22nd, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Too bad for Kucinich and Richardson, both able, worthy men! It must be galling to poll behind a joke candidate.
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October 22nd, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Is it inappropriate for a woman to snort when she laughs?!? I hope
not as this is pretty much all I’ve been doing since Stephen
announced his candidacy. Now, I have even more reason to do so…
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October 22nd, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Yes, don’t forget that the term “likely voters,” when coming from a polling firm, includes only people that voted in the last similar election. In this case, that means that anyone that didn’t vote in the presidential election of 2004 and/OR the election of 2006 were not polled. So your “unlikely voters” idea is right on, Ms Interpreted.
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