Our neighbor's straw poll

by Jason Bonham

Up until a week ago, I was planning to attend the Ames Straw Poll. Unfortunately logistics at my house made it impossible, so I am low on raw footage. But I do have a break down for you. Going into Ames, the Iowa 2008 polling trends seemed pretty dynamic, with some obvious trends:

The results of the straw poll are as follows:

Mitt Romney	4516	31%
Mike Huckabee	2587	18.1%
Sam Brownback	2192	15.3%
Tom Tancredo	1961	13.7
Ron Paul	1305	9.1%
Tommy Thompson	1039	7.3%
Fred Thompson	203	.014%
Rudy Giuliani	183	.013%
Duncan Hunter	174	.012%
John McCain	101	.007%
John Cox	41	.003%

Now let’s talk specifics:

1. Romney won. His lead was convincing. He won by a larger margin than Bush did in ‘99. Naysayers are complaining his win means nothing with no other top tier candidates competing. But let us not forget, they did compete, they just lost in June. A forfeit is still a loss. Romney actually bested Bush ’99, since even Bush couldn’t scare away his nearest competitors two months prior.

2. Huckabee V. Brownback. Huckabee won. Convincingly. Surprisingly. A good friend of mine called me when he was leaving prior to the results being announced and said he thought Huckabee would be dropping out after Ames, his showing seemed that bad. Well, he was wrong. Huckabee, who on the surface put very little effort in, was able to make good.

Huckabee’s 2nd place finish will have an interesting effect on the state of the race in general. Number one, it leaves Brownback severely marginalized. Brownback’s claim to fame was top of the second tier coupled with an unbeatable ground game in Iowa. In June, Brownback went so far as to open up a second campaign office in Ames proper. It didn’t work out so well for Sam.

Now, I am guessing, we will see large amounts of bombs thrown between the Brownback and Huckabee camps, where before Brownback was never concerned by Mike. Now he has no choice but to first go through Mike.

Huckabee’s win is also bad news for Fred Thompson. Fred Thompson has been riding the claim of “Favorite Southern Boy.” (Honestly, would anyone care about Fred if he was from New Jersey?) Unfortunately for Fred, Mike could just steal that. Mike has a more distinguished resume, and has proven to be an excellent debater. Fred has proven to be an excellent blogger, an even better procrastinator and great at putting listeners to sleep.

Right now, if Huck plays his cards right, it will be a Huck V. Fred race for favorite Southern candidate. A side note on Huckabee, he actually did bus a bunch of supporters in. He was also the beneficiary of The Fair Tax’s organizational efforts. They bussed in huge amounts of people who overwhelmingly support Huckabee since he is the only candidate to promise to actually fight for the Fair Tax. It wasn’t quite the David and Goliath Mike portrayed it as.

3. Where do Giuliani and McCain go from here? Not very far in Iowa- by my predictions- there are a things to keep in mind. In 1999 the voting attendance at the Straw Poll was just under 24,000. In 2008? 14,000. That is a 41.7% drop in attendance. At $35 a ticket that’s a $350,000 loss for the Iowa GOP, not counting potential revenue for tent spots which go to the candidates that bids the highest.

Much of Ames 2007 deflation can be attributed to Rudy, McCain and Thompson not attending. Sure there are other factors that account for the low turnout. Remember that temperatures were sweltering, potentially leaving some voters to stay home in their air conditioned house. And this straw poll was not preceded by 8 years of Clintonian angst. But in the end, when a candidate shows up at your door asking for your vote, and you know the guy cost your local GOP a ton of money because he didn’t want to lose -in other words he left the tab for his good name on your table- would you vote for him? The first graph in this post should answer the question for you.

4. Do FredHeads know how ridiculous it is to claim Fred “beat” Rudy? Please. He beat him by .001%! 5. Look at Duncan Hunters numbers, now read this quote from The Politico:

Duncan Hunter: Ninth place is just the start. The California congressman told CNN’s “Late Edition” that he would continue to campaign in Iowa despite a disappointing performance. “This is the first full week I have spent in Iowa in this campaign,” Hunter said. “I got lots of people who signed up for my campaign. … This is the start of my campaign. We are going to get out, work hard. It is a bright morning in Iowa.”

As great of a man Duncan is, he needs to just step down and hope for Secretary of Defense.

My predictions? Hunter and T. Thompson are out. Huckabee becomes a near rival of Fred Thompson, Brownback might stay in but is mortally wounded, and Romney is making Rudy look pretty bad.

Comments

F. Thompson through Cox are off by 2 decimal points.
1.4%
1.3%
1.2%
0.7%
0.3%
are the correct numbers

[Jason]

You know, my mistake. When I added those up I forgot to translate them into statistics from decimals. Sorry.

[David]

Jason, excellent analysis. Here's to Fred dropping out before ever getting in.

[rightwinger]

How come the fair tax people weren't behind Ron Paul. I thought that was their boy.

[Nate]

I know this is stating the obvious, but I dont see McCain getting anywhere in this election. I'm not sure why the newspapers still report his every word and deed.

Secondly, shouldn't Huck be in SC right now stealing Fred's crowd?

Finally, Romney's money was well spent at Ames. He locks down a must win state and gets good press in every paper. Worth the money.

[PhilCollins]

Why would fairtax people support Rep. Paul? Ex-Gov. Mike Huckabee also supports the fairtax. Two of the last three republican presidents were governors. Huckabee was a governor for 10.5 years, which is longer than Bush and Romney, combined.

[Robert Edward Johnson, Normal, IL]

I think you're going a bit too far on the "besting Bush" business. I agree that Bush "couldn't drive out" his opponents, but that's not really what Mitt did to Rudy and McCain - instead, they 'assumed' they' always keep their front-runner status and seemingly wisely decided to concentrate on us, Illinois, the fifth largest state in the US, instead of Iowa which doesn't even have a population of 3 million. Instead, they now seem to have 'support' that is very thin and not that widespread. Still, had they REALLY competed in Iowa, I'm not saying they'd have beat Romney, but Romney and Bush both got barely above 31%, so Romney would have clearly gotten less than Bush, and that's good. Romney is a lefto chameleon compared to at least the IMAGE Bush had in 1999, which was more Ron Paulish than Forbes, who had flipped between 1996 and 2000 on Bosnia while Bush wisely opposed such interventions and Gore's plea for Rwanda, etc. I admit, however, that not only are Fred, Rudy, and McCain in a weak position, but a far weaker one than many realize. The only folks with literature at the GOP McLean County Fair were Ron Paul, Mitt, and Rudy, and Rudy's was literally a day late (brought in by supporters, not sent in by the national org on the request of McLean County's GOP).

2. It is wise that you should point out the 40% plunge in voting despite an INCREASE in attendance over the years (I had honestly thought that perhaps insane gas prices might have kept people from the fair - nope). This is PATHETIC news for the GOP generally, but especially in Iowa. Clearly, the Iowans are saying, we no longer care so much about your Straw Poll as we did in 1999 when you won in 2000, but only barely more than we did in 1995 when you lost in 1996. Unless the GOP nominee is either Ron Paul or unless Mitt announces he was "brainwashed" on Iraq and is now for a pullout, you can kiss Iowa goodbye in 2008, and probably the whole country.

3. The reason a top-three win is at least in the range of possibility for Ron Paul for Illinois is the following: Mitt WON'T be the only chameleon actively pursuing it, Rudy's folks have been out in force, and I personally saw slips of paper submitted to the McLean Co. GOP saying "I'll volunteer if it's Fred Thompson." If we take the 76.3% that didn't go to Ron Paul or Tancredo and divide it evenly between the remaining six viable candidates (Hunter and T. Thompson are finished), you get 12.7%. Naturally, this would put Ron Paul or Tancredo in shooting distance. Since Illinois is way more liberal on the war (and immigration) than Tancredo, I'd expect Ron to go up and Tancredo to go down. More realistically, if we parse out the vote with Romney getting the lion's share, but not as much as in Iowa since he'll now be sharing it with Fred and Rudy and McCain (as will Brownback and Huckabee), most likely all but Romney will be, at best, in the low teens. With Ron at 9.1 in Iowa, it doesn't take much to put him in, say, third or fourth place instead of fifth, and that in a 'real' race including Rudy, Fred and McCain. Of course, what's going on is that the pro-war crowd splits the vote. With the Straw Vote from 11 AM to 4 PM, who wins - Rudy's folks who were a day late to the McLean County Fair, or Ron Paul's who had their own booth there??

[Robert Edward Johnson, Normal, IL]

Though most of your analysis was sound, you really are whistling past the graveyard when you said:

"Much of Ames 2007 deflation can be attributed to Rudy, McCain and Thompson not attending"

Uh, no. Fred and Rudy and McCain were on the ballot, and while I understand your argument on 'costing Iowa's GOP money' the fact is that the fanatic veterans types could have voted for McCain if they wanted to - but didn't - and the "Go-Fred-Go!" folks should have voted for him where your argument doesn't hold water since he's not even in the race yet (as long as summer reruns of his shows are on, the network would have to give the other candidates air time, so there are many reasons Fred has stayed out, but perhaps another NOW should be that he'd get creamed!). There are even folks who were arguing that Rudy and McCain and Fred lovers would try to vote for someone like Huckabee to defeat Mitt and make him drop out early - but it didn't happen, and you're only going to be very surprised and hurt in November 2008 when Hitlery gets elected if you don't stop to consider WHY the people of Iowa who were already at the fair that day didn't bother to vote for SOME sort of GOP candidate.

You further compounded this by saying:

"And this straw poll was not preceded by 8 years of Clintonian angst."

DUH! It was preceded by 8 years of DUBYA angst, including LBJ-type spending and an idiotic, insane, ignorant war in Iraq which jacked up energy prices by a factor of 3 and raised taxes by $1600 a year on the average family of four - and that's not even counting Leaving No Child Behind, Prescription Drug Parte D (both together as expensive as the war in Iraq), the UAE port deal, the Z-visa, etc. THAT is most likely why the folks didn't vote in the Straw Poll - Bush lied to them too many times, so they don't want Rudy and Mitt doing it for them as a high art form a la flip flops.

[Hascat]

The fair tax people don't support Ron Paul because he wants to eliminate the IRS, not replace it with something else. Discussing the fair tax is meaningless without real spending reform taking place first.

[Joetta]

The Iowa Straw Poll is not at their State Fair -- people came to Ames, not Des Moines, for this event. Die hards and out-of-staters! A friend of mine was there from 11 - 4 and spent time in each candidate's tent. Was impressed with it all and disappointed more people didn't show up.
She and her husband voted for Ron Paul after MUCH study and some debate with a few of the candidates over the past several months.
She was horrified that Romney won.