Poll: Stephen Colbert Leads South Carolina Senate Race

When we joked last week that Sen. Jim Demint’s resignation as one of the two U.S. senators representing the state of South Carolina in Congress would lead to countless rumors about Stephen Colbert running for the office in his home state, we had no idea that voters in the state seem to be actually clamoring for him to run for the office.

Reports The Hill:

Talk-show host Stephen Colbert is South Carolina voters’ preferred candidate to replace Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), according to a new poll by the Democratic Public Policy Polling.

The Comedy Central host, who’s openly lobbied for the seat, leads a field where the rest of the names are Republicans: 20 percent of voters want South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to appoint him to DeMint’s seat when the senator resigns from Congress.

Haley has publicly ruled him out, however, because he didn’t know the official state drink is milk.

“Stephen, thank you for your interest in South Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat and for the thousands of tweets you and your fans sent me,” she wrote on her Facebook page on Friday. “But you forget one thing, my friend. You didn’t know our state drink. Big, big mistake.”

In case you were wondering, former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford — he of the “hiking the Appalachian trail” fame — registered in at 8%. So, in other words…

(Via Short Form Blog)