Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Sarah Palin Crushes All Comers In American Spectator Straw Poll



More straw polling is coming out this morning, and once again, Sarah Palin just crushes all comers. As we reported earlier, she was the overwhelming favorite of Hot Air readers, in a poll that asked some interesting questions, yielding some quite revealing answers.

Now comes the results from the straw poll conducted by American Spectator Magazine.

While online polls don't usually excite us one way or the other, the American Spectator poll, just like the Hot Air poll, is noteworthy because the website went above and beyond to insure there was only one vote per customer. This poll required both a valid e-mail account and manually entering a coded text for the vote to count.

We're not all that surprised by the huge margin of victory by Sarah. She usually tops these polls. What is surprising is the fact all of the perceived "front runners", Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich, et al, couldn't even beat "other" in this poll. Sarah got 45.85 percent of the vote, and the number two vote getter, Herman Cain, couldn't break ten percent. He ended up with 7.13 percent of the vote.

One thing to remember, these are not scientific polls by any stretch of the imagination. However, they do gauge enthusiasm among the core group who will decide who the 2012 Republican nominee will be. It should also be noted that editorially, Hot Air and American Spectator are not "fans" of Sarah Palin, and most of the content about her takes on a negative feel. [even when it's positive news] Of course, readers of both websites know the authors get pounded pretty hard in their comments sections because of it.

That's kind of the point of the whole thing. Enthusiasm for Sarah Palin to be our next President is sky high among the base of the party. Enthusiasm is what win elections.

If we have one real sticking point in these polls, it would be the number of candidates. I know there are a ton of names out there being tossed about, but many have said "no" to a run, or are fringe candiates who have no shot at all. I'd like to see some major straw polling that just included those who are highly likely to run, and have a legitimate shot. A "top 10" if you will. It would be interesting to see how that would shake out.

With that said, here are the results:

Sarah Palin        45.85%
Herman Cain       7.13%
Mitch Daniels       6.00%
Ron Paul              5.89%
Chris Christie        5.77%
Other                    4.87%
Jim DeMint           3.55%
Mike Huckabee    3.12%
Mitt Romney         2.85%
Newt Gingrich       2.38%
Paul Ryan              2.14%
Tim Pawlenty         1.72%
Michele Bachmann 1.60%
Mike Pence            1.44%
Haley Barbour        1.17%
Rick Santorum        0.97%
Rand Paul               0.94%
Marco Rubio          0.74%
Rick Perry              0.74%
John Thune             0.66%
Gary Johnson          0.47

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