Can you identify these unknown presidential candidates?

The 2016 Caucus season has officially kicked off this week in Iowa. If you’ve been waiting to binge-watch the election season drama until after the finale airs, spoiler alert: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Ted Cruz stole the spotlight and the delegates.

In a quick imaginary survey I just did in my head, only one percent of the population was surprised by this. We can’t blame the other imaginary 99 percent, though, since media coverage across candidates has been so skewed towards the Core Four. What with all their enthusiastic yelling, many people don’t even know who else is running. Just for a little fun, I asked students in the Diag to recognize lower-polling presidential candidates — here’s how it went.

Meet Mike Huckabee

Mike is a Republican and the former Governor of Arkansas. Prior to the Iowa caucus, Mike was polling at around four percent. After the Iowa caucus, Mike dropped out of the presidential race.

Meet Rick Santorum

Rick is a Republican and former Senator from Pennsylvania. Rick was polling at around one percent before the Iowa caucus, and like Mike, also dropped out of the race after a poor performance.

Meet John Kasich

John is a Republican and current Governor of Ohio. Prior to the Iowa caucus, John was polling at around one percent, but that hasn’t fazed him — he’s still in the race.

Meet Martin O’Malley

Martin is a Democrat and former Governor of Maryland. Prior to the Iowa caucus, Martin was polling at around two percent. After a less than impressive Iowa turnout, Martin realized the race was too much of an uphill battle, and maybe he was a little berned out. I’ll see myself out.

Meet Bob Ade

Bob is a Democrat from Florida. Bob is my dad. Bob hasn’t worn a suit since my high school graduation (see above). Bob is definitely not running for president.

To see if anyone would try to save face and say they recognized a person even if they didn’t, I also asked them to identify my dad, someone no one should recognize.

To the Diag!

As much as I’d like to run through a field chanting “Leaders and the best”, I’ll be completely honest: your performance was abysmal, Michigan students.

Aside from a very enthusiastic “Kasiiiiiiiiich,” the average response to each picture was a sheepish, “sorry no.” Huckabee was by far the most recognized, with four identifications and two “he looks familiars”. Only one person was able to correctly ID all four legitimate candidates.

To make matters worse, four people thought not-so-presidential Bob “looked familiar.”

The Steve Harvey Award for Best False Identification goes to this lovely man, who told me my dad was New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees.

It must get annoying to Drew, always getting stopped in the streets by my dad’s adoring fans.

After I explained why I had made them five minutes late for class to show them pictures of middle-aged men, I asked them how much, if at all, they followed politics. At the end of two days of experimenting, all but one person said they either didn’t follow politics at all, or did very little. The one person who said they did follow politics was also the one person to successfully point out every candidate, minus our ole friend Bob.

The Coffee Shop Hipster award for Most Interesting Response to the Follow-up Question goes to this dapper gent, who “follows politics, but not in a traditional sense.”

I expected more from you, fellow Wolverines. Maybe Bob Ade really will run for President just to teach you a lesson.