Iowa straw poll: What exactly DOES it mean anyway…?
November 30th, 2009 | 
Author: If the Ames straw poll in Iowa revealed anything over the weekend, it was the weakness of the Republican field. From the Des Moines Register:
Only 14,302 people voted in the poll, far fewer than the 23,685 who cast ballots in the last big straw poll in 1999.
That’s a sign Republicans are not happy with their choices. At least they aren’t excited enough to brave the summer heat to vote for them.
Mitt Romney spent more than $2 million in Television ads, but still received only 4,516 votes, which means his campaign spent at least $443 in ad money for each vote he received. That doesn’t even take into account the cost of the free T-shirts, air-conditioned tents, buses for supporters, and months worth of salaries for 60 "super-volunteers" to "talk him up."
USA Today did more math. In comparison to Romney’s costs (which actually may top $1,000 per vote when all costs are factored in):
* Third-place finisher Sam Brownback says he spent about $325,000 to win his 2,192 votes. That’s $148.27 for each vote.
* Second-place finisher Mike Huckabee spent about $150,000 and received 2,587 votes. That’s $57.98 per vote.
Even though Republicans tried much harder to turn out people at the Ames straw poll, there were 40% less voters at Ames this year. How hard did they try?
In ‘99 Bush brought in 70 buses and earned 7,418 votes.
In ‘99 the Forbes campaign had 109 buses and received 4,921 votes.
In comparison, Romney had 125 buses shipping people to Ames, and garnered only 4,516 votes while Sam Brownback had 100 buses and garnered only 2,192 votes.
Was It Dirty Money?
One of Mitt Romney’s top fund-raisers has been indicted for a scheme to defraud companies out of $32 million that he allegedly spent on real estate, a yacht and private jet trips for himself and his pets.
Raining On Huckabee’s Parade. . . FEC Investigates
While the Huckabee campaign bought a number of tickets to the straw poll for its supporters, it didn’t arrange for transportation for all of their supporters. Instead, the campaign in Iowa was encouraging people to catch rides on the FairTax buses.
Word is the Federal Election Commission will be looking into the situation in the coming days. Already, the FEC has been investigating the role a homeschooling 501c3 organization played in political activity on behalf of the Huckabee campaign. The FairTax organization, which has been asking all Republican candidates to support its proposal of a national retail sales tax, has not endorsed a candidate, though Huckabee has said he supports the plan.
I knew it. Take the GD money out of campains!
Just goes to show what I said ealier, some damn fool will get a llot of people to wast their money on him.
Dumb idiots giving him all that money! Oh well.
Posted in Comparison Television
Every major candidate has a fundraiser here or there who gets in trouble for something. When you have an organization of thousands of people, you can’t keep tabs on all of them.
As for comparing 1999 to 2007, you have made a fatal flaw in your comparison. Back in 1999, people like Bush and Forbes were bringing in voters from all over the midwest. In 2007, for the first time, they checked drivers licenses to make sure the voters were actually from Iowa. Therefore you’d obviously expect overall voting numbers to be lower.
Of course, nobody gives a crap what happens at the Iowa Straw poll. It’s just a fundraiser. It means nothing.
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Thank you for that info.
I think it’s a sad, sad, reflection on the American public, when people essentially have to be bought with free stuff to show their patriotism, for the candidates of their choice.
You’ll notice Ron Paul wasn’t even mentioned although he received over 1,300 votes………Those 1300 + voters WERE the true American Patriots because they didn’t have to be bribed to vote for the candidate of their choice…..Ron Paul………I’m pretty sure they paid their own gas money to get there, & the $35 to vote, plus any other expenses out of their own pockets………Would The Real Patriotic Americans Please Stand Up And Be Counted On To Vote For Ron Paul!!!!!!
Thank you.
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It means nothing.
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It’s just that statistically very few have won the presidency without Iowa, but you’re right, everything is corrupted now…it’s as if we’re living in some banana republic,
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I think it means very little - it has a mixed record of predicting the nomination winner.
But any value of the exercise was eliminated with the decision of front runners not to be involved.
No poll for the Republican nomination that excludes Giuliani and Thompson is worth running.
This may have also impacted the turnout - by both keeping the supporters of those who chose not to participate away and by registering the exercise as pointless to the supporters of other candidates who were involved.
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Nothing. A short answer to an extremly long winded question.
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I knew it. Take the GD money out of campains!
Just goes to show what I said ealier, some damn fool will get a llot of people to wast their money on him.
Dumb idiots giving him all that money! Oh well.
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/isaveamerica/
Mitt Romney cheated at Ames. Huckabee did well because of FairTax (even though he’s a tax-and-spend liberal). Brownback finished behind his clone. Tancredo actually did fairly well, though his clone Hunter had the most embarrassing performance. Tommy Thompson dropped out because he didn’t finish in the top 2. Fred Thompson had no grassroots support, showing that his "campaign" is a classic astroturf movement. Rudy Giuliani and John McCain received little-to-no support. Cox had no chance to begin with.
The only winner at Ames was Ron Paul. His 5th place finish (even though most of his supporters at the poll were from out of state) with over 1300 votes officially (though Romney likely stole 1500 votes or so from Dr. Paul) finally disproved the media’s absurd conspiracy theories that he only has the support of about 5 Internet spammers and showed that he has real support. It is also a good thing for his campaign that he didn’t win because it means he won’t flame out like Howard Dean did 4 years ago or Pat Buchanan did in both 92 and 96. Ron Paul has a good chance to be the Republican nominee if he can continue to draw supporters at his current rate, especially since the rest of the GOP field is ridiculously weak.
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I don’t think Romney cheated, but yes, Paul did well considering time and money spent. I thought the Paul camp was going to do an exit poll to see if the results matched up?
A straw poll is a poll that you usually have to pay to enter, it’s more of a publicity/fundraiser/opinion event, than a real "vote" or "poll". I think it’s like a "straw man" or "fake" poll.
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