[A slightly edited version of this article has now been published on the satirical news blog The Oracle Speaks]

Despite disbelief from people with a so-called ‘education’, it turns out that the majority of the UK population really do think that ranking things in numerical order is too complicated.

“Millions of people are apparently unable to comprehend the idea that if their preferred candidate didn’t win, they might want some further say in the matter,” said dumbness commentator Peter Frampton.

The problem seems to arise from a widespread inability to fathom concepts that are more advanced than nose-picking. To most people, anything more complicated than “ug, want him win” is clearly an attempt to confuse their tiny little minds with something that might be called ‘mathematics’, if only they could remember how to spell it.

“There also seems to be some kind of mental block about spotting lies,” says Peter. “When the ‘no’ campaign said that AV would kill babies, support the BNP and turn us all into stinking foreigners, anyone with a couple of functioning synapses could see that it was clearly the Tories massively bullshitting to try to stay in power. But it seems that most people accepted this bollocks at face value.

“Marketing departments are going to learn a lot of lessons from this. Expect adverts from Heinz about how opening tins of own-brand beans is really complicated, or from Pampers explaining that Huggies will actually force your baby to smear its excrement all over your walls. The trouble is, we’ve now proved that huge numbers of demi-apes with shit for brains will genuinely believe this stuff.”

“Actually, that’s unfair on apes. And shit.”

Nick Clegg, who has now entered some kind of quantum realm of unpopularity hitherto unknown to science, expressed surprise at the result. “I knew people were stupid: that’s why I thought I might still be popular despite being personally responsible for letting the Conservatives fuck the entire country up the arse. But seriously… most of the UK populace was convinced by the ‘Losing Boxer Wins’ poster? Jesus. Fucking. Christ.”