Ten percent of Floridians said they believe Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer when asked in a Public Policy Polling survey released on Thursday.
{mosads}An additional 28 percent responded they were unsure, while 62 percent confidently asserted the Texas senator is not the unidentified northern California serial killer who sent taunting encrypted letters to the press in the 1960s and ’70s.
The illogical conspiracy theory — Ted Cruz was a toddler in Canada during the infamous serial killer’s lengthy murder spree — has been around for several years, kept alive by tongue-in-cheek “proof” posted on various social media networks.
Interest in the impossible connection between Cruz and the Zodiac Killer has been so robust, in fact, that it is at the time of writing a top result when typing the words “Ted Cruz is” into the Google search engine.
On Wednesday, Public Policy Polling offered to hand the last question in its poll of Florida voters to so-called Weird Twitter, which had long sought to convince an established pollster to ask its participant their thoughts on the theory.
And the rest is alternate history.
Cruz garners a similar 10 percent from the left-leaning PPP’s survey when Floridians are asked for whom they are voting in the GOP primary.
He trails primary front-runner Donald Trump, who garners 45 percent support, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who sits at 25 percent support in his home state, according to the poll.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich places fourth in the poll, with 8 percent support, followed by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, with 5 percent support.
The poll surveyed 464 likely Republican primary voters Feb. 24–25 and has a margin of error of 4.6 percent.