C-PAC: Straw Poll Results Released

This evening, the results of the C-PAC straw poll were released. According to an article on Yahoo News, Mitt Romney won the straw poll with 21% of the vote. He was followed by Rudy Giuliani with 17%, Brownback with 15%, and Gingrich with 14%.

I, quite frankly, found these results to be a tad surprising. There were 1,705 votes cast over the three-day period, and I have to wonder how many of these voters were members of the Romney squad. I'm not bashing Mitt, or his campaigners, but it's an undeniable fact that they were the most visible campaigners there. Perhaps that means that they swayed a lot of minds by pushing their Mitt stickers on everyone who walked by. According to Yahoo!, last year's C-PAC had Senator George Allen in the lead for president with 22% of the vote, followed by McCain at 20% (his decision to not attend C-PAC this year hurt him big time, as he only received 12% of the vote this year).

The Giuliani campaign had absolutely no promotion at C-PAC. This also says something for the candidate. Sure he didn't get number one, but he also didn't have to work for it like Mitt apparently did. The Romney campaigners were at every intersection in the hotel with large signs, big-lettered shirts, and tons of oval stickers. You couldn't avoid them, and they only thing they talked about was the straw poll and the Romney speech (which occurred Friday afternoon). Giuliani didn't have any campaigners, signs, stickers or even pictures of himself anywhere at the event.

The Romney win in the straw poll, while not necessarily front-page news, is a tad surprising considering that he has been behind Giuliani, McCain, and Gingrich in almost every poll I've seen in the past few weeks. Are Republicans at C-PAC trying to send a message to Giuliani that his liberal stances on social issues don't line up with the party's brand of conservatism? Or were enough people swayed to the side of Mitt?

The race for president has started so extremely early that much happening right now truly matters. I find it impressive that Newt got such a high vote while being one of the few on the list to not announce his candidacy (Yahoo! reports that Newt has said that he won't announce any decisions until the fall).

The full straw poll results can be downloaded from the C-PAC website.