Only 1 percent of the vote went for Herman Cain in Saturday’s primary. | REUTERS No traction for Colbert-Cain train

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Not many South Carolinians got on board the Stephen Colbert-commandeered Cain Train.

Just a few thousand people — 1 percent of the vote — went for Herman Cain in Saturday’s primary, despite the comedian’s effort to turn a joke out of Saturday’s primary results by urging fans to vote for the former Godfather’s CEO’s, whose name remained on the ballot.


Colbert trumpeted the former candidate as an alternative to voting for him on his Comedy Central show through the past week. A super PAC set up to aid the effort even aired a commercial teasing that Cain is “such a Washington outsider he’s not even running for president … Send them a message. On Jan. 21, vote Herman Cain.”

But despite the positive reception on the College of Charleston’s campus Friday, when Colbert held a joint rally with Cain, college students interviewed said they and their friends didn’t take the joke seriously enough to follow through at their polling places on Saturday.

“Me personally, I viewed it as a gag,” Seth Whisnant, 24, a University of South Carolina student who voted for Ron Paul.

Steve Kropski, 26, a law student at the University of South Carolina, said he thinks most people will take Colbert’s endorsement of Cain as a joke.

“I can’t imagine people would [actually vote for Cain], but I never underestimate that there are some people who did.”

Lindsey Lipscomb, 20, a junior at the University of South Carolina who voted for Newt Gingrich here in Columbia this afternoon, said she didn’t think Colbert’s stunt was “wise” because it could take votes away from viable candidates.

“It’s just going to take away votes and skew the margins for everyone else,” she said, adding that she thought Cain had been “a great candidate” with “a lot of excellent points.”

One student and Ron Paul supporter told POLITICO that she thought the only students who would vote for Cain are people who didn’t have a strong preference to begin with.

“Some people might have just taken it seriously because they don’t care about any other candidates, they don’t care to vote for any of them,” said Chetna Mehra, a 21-year-old junior at USC who voted for Ron Paul. “But hopefully they didn’t take it seriously.”