As I noted yesterday afternoon, the big headline coming out of Family Research Council’s Value Voters Summit was that Mitt Romney had, just barely, won the straw poll conducted at the conference.
As it turns out, that may not really be the case:
I’m not sure how to explain this. Let’s start with this. Technically, Mitt Romney won the big Value Voters Straw poll but it’s not that simple. The vote was open to people online and in that sense, Romney won with 1595 votes compared to Mike Huckabee’s 1565 votes. It was just a 30 vote difference. But for the people that actually voted onsite, it was no contest. Huckabee won 488 votes to Romney’s second place 99. That’s called a thumpin’
Here are the results from those poll participants who actually attended the conference:
- Mike Huckabee — 488 votes — 51.26%
- Mitt Romney — 99 votes — 10.40%
- Fred Thompson — 77 votes — 8.09%
- Tom Tancredo 65 votes — 6.83%%
- Rudy Giuliani — 60 votes — 6.30%
- Duncan Hunter — 54 votes — 5.67%
- John McCain — 30 votes — 3.15%
- Sam Brownback — 26 votes — 2.73%
- Ron Paul — 25 votes — 2.63%
- Undecided — 11 votes — 1.16%
- Not Voting — 7 votes — 0.74%
And the overall results:
- Mitt Romney — 1595 votes — 27.62%
- Mike Huckabee— 1565 votes — 27.15%
- Ron Paul — 865 — 14.98%
- Fred Thompson — 564 — 9.77%
- Undecided — 329 — 5.70%
- Sam Brownback — 297 — 5.14%
- Duncan Hunter — 140 votes — 2.42%
- Tom Tancredo — 133 votes — 2.30%
- Rudy Giuliani — 107 — 1.85%
- John McCain — 81 — 1.40%
- Not Voting — 67 votes — 1.16%
From this we learn the following:
1. Only 7 % of Mitt Romney’s votes came from people who actually attended the conference.
2. Only 3 % of Ron Paul’s votes came from people who actually attended the conference.
3. Less than 200 people who attended the conference voted for either McCain or Giuliani
And, as David Brody notes:
Clearly, the people that actually heard the speeches thought Huckabee was the best candidate there. It would be one thing if Huckabee and Romney were neck and neck for onsite voting but for Huckabee to be such an overwhelming onsite winner, that is saying something.
Here’s what it says. It says that you have social conservatives that are ready to embrace him and he’s ready to embrace them. That speech he made on Saturday was electric. I was there. I saw the crowd. They ate it up.
The real dark horse of this campaign could be a guy named Huckabee.
H/T: Andrew Sullivan
