Ames Straw Poll results

August 11, 2007

So, how’d things turn out in the Ames Straw Poll? The final tally was delayed after a voting-machine error (insert sly joke here), but here are the results, by way of IowaPolitics.com:

1. Mitt Romney
2. Mike Huckabee
3. Sam Brownback
4. Tom Tancredo
5. Ron Paul
6. Tommy Thompson
7. Fred Thompson
8. Rudy Giuliani
9. Duncan Hunter
10. John McCain
11. John Cox

Marc Ambinder has more details on the final tallies.

Keep in mind, organizers hoped for 20,000 straw-poll participants today, and the total was just over 14,000. Eight years ago, nearly 24,000 Republicans took part in the event.

Some of this, it’s fair to say, is the result of some top-tier candidates deciding not to participate in Ames, but it also speaks to the ongoing lack of enthusiasm for the GOP field of candidates. (When Obama polls better among Iowa Republicans than several Republican candidates, I think it’s fair to say the field is struggling to inspire the GOP faithful.)

Good for Huckabee – he’s the only GOP candidate who seems to have any personal integrity. I don’t agree with much of his politics (obviously) but he definitely carries himself well and seems to be an upstanding person. I’ve also heard him say, unlike many others of the Christian right, that he doesn’t feel that government’s role is to impose the viewpoints of the President or any one person on its citizens. Whether he has said that all the time, I don’t know, but he has every time I see him, which in my mind sets him apart from every other Republican of this generation. He was saying he needed a strong showing so let’s hope this suffices and that some of the other idiots start dropping out.

Homer

  • Huckabee actually gave very good speeches at the straw poll and at the most recent Republican debate. He’s the only Republican who manages to sound both populist (e.g. his references to the voters as his “bosses”) and reasonable, stances which play well in the Midwest.

    Tancredo and Paul had the advantage of fanatical supporters, which, combined with the low overall turnout, explains their good showing.

    Tommy Thompson and Duncan Hunter are probably done now, though Hunter is too self-absorbed to admit it.

  • Great live video coverage is archived here of Iowa Straw Poll upwards of 2000 viewers watched and waited for hours for voting returns. The New Media (one guy with mobile laptop and 1.3MB pixel camera with upwards of 2000 viewers watching and chatting. I think Old Media is dead.

    How much did each candidate spend and how would that break down per
    ‘cost’ of vote?

    1. Mitt Romney • 31.5% (4516 votes)
    2. Mike Huckabee • 18.1% (2587 votes)
    3. Sam Brownback • 15.3% (2192 votes)
    4. Tom Tancredo • 13.7% (1961 votes)
    5. Ron Paul • 9.1% (1305 votes)
    6. Tommy Thompson • 7.3% (1039 votes)
    7. Fred Thompson • 1.4% (203 votes)
    8. Rudy Giuliani • 1.3% (183 votes)
    9. Duncan Hunter • 1.2% (174 votes)
    10. John McCain • 1% (101 votes)

  • The AP says officials were initially expecting as many as 40,000 Iowans to attend the straw poll– and that’s with full knowledge that Giuliani, Thompson and McCain weren’t attending. So this seems to be a bigger letdown in terms of turnout than had been expected.

  • No real surprises in the results, I guess, but honestly, there isn’t one single person on that list about whom, if he were elected, I could say, “well, I guess it could be worse.”

    Bythe way – #11 on that list – John Cox? Who the heck is he? Have we heard that name before?

  • 40,000 showed up and only 14,000 voted? Seriously? That’s piss poor. McCain couldn’t beat out Hunter, even though McCain didn’t try? That is weak.

  • lol@McCain!

    Oops…
    I meant:
    101 votes@McCain!

    Johnny are you singing now?
    Mine if I join in?

    Bombed bombed bombed, bombed bombed in Iowa…

  • Boy, rege – you weren’t kidding about that “only real conservative” that is John Cox…I started shuddering about a paragraph into his page on positions.

    Thanks for the link to the info –

  • From John Cox’s website: “I am a baptized, born-again evangelical Catholic”. Sorry to display some theological ignorance here, but aren’t “evangelical” and “Catholic” mutually exclusive?

    More generally, this guy looks like a wannabe Morry Taylor. Which is pretty pathetic.

  • 8. Rudy Guiliani

    You might want to fix this, CB.

    Though if he were a write-in candidate, I bet Guiliani would beat Giuliani…

  • Like Anne, I don’t think I ever heard of John Cox before today. After checking out the link kindly provided by rege, I would prefer never to hear of him again.

    I am definitely not one of the Ron Paul fanboys who cheer him so loudly on the internets, but this has to be considered a win for Paul. Fifth place!

    Does anyone else think that Tancredo and Brownback appeal to the same element of Republican voters? If you add their votes together, Romney is in trouble. With his expensive organization, Romney barely outpolled them.

    I was pleased about Huckabee’s success. Of all the Republican candidates, he is the one that I think is the least repulsive. I admit it – that isn’t much of a compliment.

  • I dredged up an article at CNN on the 1999 Ames straw poll for comparison and there are some interesting possible parallels and contrasts to be drawn. In terms of money CNN estimated Bush and Steve Forbes each spent around $2 Million on the event in 1999. That’s two major, well funded campaign organizations pulling out all the stops to bring bodies in and 4 million strong, pre-GWB-economic-policy dollars (probably equivalent to a billion or so in 2007 dollars) spent by those two alone. It’s possible that alone could explain some of the drop-off in attendance this year, although probably not all. Not surprisingly, Bush and Forbes were the two top vote getters with 31% and 21% respectively.

    What’s interesting is that in terms of percentages Huckabee did almost as well this year while spending very modestly, as Forbes did in ’99 after flooding the place with money. But Libby Dole also came in at 14% in ’99 with a third more total votes than Huckabee got this year and I don’t believe she spent any $2 million to get them.

    McCain skipped Ames in 1999 too as you may recall and came in 9th out of field of 11 with 83 votes. Iowans just don’t much like people skipping their straw poll I guess. But of course McCain remained the darling of the news media and continued to run strong everywhere else, right up until getting conveniently swiftboated (actually “punked” might be the better word) by a Bush-aligned smear group in SC, which the Bush campaign solemnly swears to this day they had nothing to do with. So I would not read too much into this for Giuliani.

    Bottom line, Huckabee has been handed a gift free media in his race for third. It will be hard to capitalize on that with no money though, so unless people drop Brownback and Tancredo like red-hot potatos and the contributions start rolling in before the buzz fades, he’ll be back to “Mike Who?” before you know it. It helps that it’s August and there’s not much else for political reporters two talk about. That could expand his window of opportunity by as much as a week or so.

    I do think this was a smart buy for Romney though. As the talking heads chew and re-chew this his name will keep coming up too — he did win it after all and one of the things he desperately needs right now is national name ID. He also has one shot at getting past America’s mayor as things stack up right now and that’s to do extremely well in Iowa and NH, then leverage that into at least one more win before super Tuesday. Things are going to happen so fast that there won’t be much time to build momentum. He needs to come out of Iowa like a bullet from a gun to pull it off and as I previously noted, I don’t think Iowa Republicans like people blowing off their straw poll.

  • What the results don’t show is that Mitler (and his Private Army), Huckster, Brownshirt, and Tankkk-redo all trucked in people on buses. Of course Romney had the biggest tent, sound-stage, and that famous Romney “dropped” BBQ –buying as many votes as he could.

    Ron Paul’s supporters are almost entirely volunteer. I met Ron Paul supporters there from Oklahoma (active-duty Air Force), Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Texas, and Kentucky, all there on their own dime –like I was. I drove 5 1/2 hours from Chicago to Ames.

    We were also the loudest and most enthusiastic . It was a proud day for American Democracy and I am proud to have participated. We made sure that everyone at that event knew that we supported Ron Paul and his message and the reasons for our support –liberty, freedom & peace. I participated in at least three marches around the Iowa State University campus with hundreds of people –and I lost my voice as a result (but my voice was heard far and wide). I am encouraged that so many people are fed up with fascism and favor freedom for a change.

    Dr. Paul’s speech was outstanding. Although I do not agree with him on every issue, the two most important issues in my mind, ending the U.S. Military Occupation of Iraq (& Dick’s Private Empire) and restoring the rule of law and the Constitution, Dr. Paul is the leading candidate among Republicans and in the top two or three among Democrats. He is intelligent, passionate, and most importantly honest.

    I long for the opportunity to say these things about the “more competitive candidates” on the Democratic side. But I am afraid that I will not have that opportunity in 2008.

    On the lighter side, I was called “surrenderer,” “defeatist” and “idiot” by various ReThug mouth-foamers, not to mention Laura Ingraham’s offensive remarks prior to Dr. Paul’s speech. Apparently they have a certain disdain for the practice of American Democracy.

    Of course, all of this is scarcely reported in the Corporate Military Industrial Media. Wonder why.

  • Winner: Huckabee, who can use the Ames Straw Poll to give his campaign a push.

    Loser: the Ames Straw Poll, which will be dismissed as meaningless precisely because of its oddball results of Tancredo beating Giuliani and Tommy beating Fred.

    basilisc: aren’t “evangelical” and “Catholic” mutually exclusive?

    Not necessarily. “Evangelical” means one who evangelizes — carries the message, like missionaries. It can also have the specific meaning of evangelical protestants who believe themselves to be the true inheritors of the original, catholic Christian church. There’s actually an evangelicalcatholic.com if you want to know more.

  • “Loser: the Ames Straw Poll, which will be dismissed as meaningless precisely because of its oddball results of Tancredo beating Giuliani and Tommy beating Fred.”

    Well it’s not that kind of poll. It’s not supposed to be scientific. It’s a fund-raiser for the state Reptilian Republican party. Generally the presidential campaigns bus people in and feed them and all but offer free pony rides to get votes (or maybe they do have pony rides). Anyway in terms of credibility, if it could survive Pat Robertson winning with 34% of the vote in 1987, it can probably survive anything.

  • Ron Paul 2008 dot com. Ron Paul may very well have come out with much higher numbers, had Diebold machines not been used. To ALL the Ron Paul beleivers — talk to your friends and neighbors — this guy knows how to run our country the right way. Diebold voting machines are known to have no ability to trace votes, and can easily be programmed to swing votes. Don’t beleive me? Go to video dot google dot com — and lookup OHIO VOTING — there are many links to the programmer who confessed to writing programs to swing votes in 2000. Oh, I voted for Bush, but he did loose in 2000 — there was funny-business. Ron Paul is the answer to what America needs.

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