“No, I wouldn’t run for United States president right now,” said sophomore Vivian Yip. “I’m too young, what’s the point?”
Iowan rising sophomore Brady Olson evidently disagrees, seeing as the 15-year-old is currently running a campaign to get into the White House.
Olson found out just how to catch the interest of many Americans, as well as a vast online community: campaigning for president as a too-young-to-actually-be-president candidate named after the vulgar Internet slang “Deez Nuts.”
Matched against Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, Deez Nuts raked in 7 percent of the vote in Iowa, 8 percent in Minnesota, and almost 10 percent in North Carolina, according to polls done by Public Policy Polling.
“It started because somebody emailed us under the name Deez Nuts,” PPP polling analyst Jim Williams told the Daily Beast. “He said, ‘I’m Deez Nuts. I’m running. Here’s my filing statement. Would you poll me?’”
PPP, a well-known and much-cited American polling firm, agreed to do so. The company has a reputation for jokes like a detailed poll on hipsters in 2013. (Among other results, they found that 46 percent of Americans charged hipsters with “soulless cultural appropriation.”)
“People probably just think it’s funny to vote for Deez Nuts to be our president,” said senior Clare Marks. “I can’t think of why anyone would seriously vote for him.”
Although the person behind Deez Nuts is only fifteen years old, it doesn’t mean that he can’t be a presidential candidate. Over 500 applications to be considered as a candidate for the 2016 presidential office have been filed, one of which belongs to a cat from Kentucky.
“Anybody can fill out a Form 2,” says FEC Deputy Press Officer Christian Hilland. “We do vetting, but it’s more about did they fill out the information correctly? Did they review the fields? It doesn’t speak to the authenticity of the individual who filed the claim.”
Olson filled out his Form 2 on July 26, but started gaining media attention later when he contacted PPP and asked to be included in their surveying. When he garnered the largest percentage of the vote for an independent candidate in 20 years, his popularity on the Internet surged.
“Right now the voters don’t like either of the people leading in the two main parties, and that creates an appetite for a third-party candidate,” said PPP director Tom Jensen.
His assumed name is not particularly serious, but Olson has some serious ideas and opinions on politics, and has launched a concerted effort in his campaigning through Twitter, Facebook, and his own website, complete with a political platform.
While Marks viewed the Deez Nuts campaign as a joke, senior Denis Yudin sees the success of the candidate due to causes more in line with Jensen’s hypothesis.
“People are so disenchanted with establishment politics and a two-party system that largely favors special interests and the oligarchy over la volonte du peuple that they’d rather throw their vote away in an act of open defiance than just not vote at all or pick the least of all evils,” said Yudin. “Also, come on, that candidate name though [sic].”
