This is not The Onion.
An actual polling company actually polled 853 actual registered voters to see if they would rather vote for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton or a Giant Meteor hitting the earth. And the results were pretty interesting.
Public Policy Polling (PPP) is a North Carolina-based polling company. They are not a hoax. But they do have a history of asking unusual questions along with the usual "who would you vote for, do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion," and so on. For instance, they asked Florida voters if Ted Cruz was the Zodiac Killer and if Christians believed President Obama would be Raptured.
In this poll, they asked all those usual questions we talked about. Clinton has a 4-point edge if the election were held today, though the margin of error is 3.8 percent. Clinton and Trump both have high unfavorables.
However, they would still win if the other option was a giant meteor obliterating earth and/or causing a drastic climate change that would either kill us, as it did the dinosaurs, or force us to evolve into a species of super-beings who are impervious to heat.
The Giant Meteor 2016 movement, also known as Sweet Meteor O' Death or #SMOD16, began as a joke by those unhappy with their presidential choices. The Twitter account now boasts more than 20,000 followers. You can even get a bumper sticker. "Ready to Make an Impact, Tough on Putin & Iran," the bio reads. "I'll probably destroy all Earthly life."
Well at least it's upfront about it.
So in the poll, which really happened, 43 percent of people would vote for Clinton, 38 percent for Trump and 13 percent would break for the giant meteor.
7 percent were undecided.
Of note: The meteor option polled nearly twice as high as a separate question which included the main third (and fourth) party candidates. Jill Stein of the Green Party polled at 2 percent, while Libertarian Gary Johnson hit 5 percent.
See the full poll for yourself, and keep an open mind about all the presidential candidates as we head toward November. Even the ones who would likely create a crater the size of Texas.
Allison Carter is an engagement producer at IndyStar. Follow her on Twitter @AllisonLCarter.
