Posted on 12/04/2010 6:40:44 PM PST by Anamnesis
posted at 8:40 pm on December 4, 2010 by Patrick Ishmael
A big thanks to everyone that participated in this First Annual HARRY balloting. In 24 hours, over 4000 readers cast their ballots for the best and worst of the 2010 political season. So, who’s the Hot Air Readership Republican of the Year?
Like any good awards ceremony, we’ll start off with the minor categories.
Hot Air Story of the Year
Beating out its nearest competitor by more than a three-to-one margin, the blog post “Video: Chris Christie destroys reporter for calling him confrontational“ takes home the inaugural HASY Trophy, snatching up 40% of the vote in the six-way race. This year’s runner-up is “Dingell: It will take a while for ObamaCare to ‘control the people’.” Rounding out the top 3 — “Dem congressman: If Guam gets too overpopulated, it might tip over.” (Be sure to search the Archives yourself for some of the other oldie-but-goodies.)
Favorite Topic of the Year
What pushed readers’ buttons? It looks like anything and everything Chris Christie was welcome content, with posts relating to the current New Jersey governor capturing the only majority answer for the question (51%). Christie was more popular than posts on The economy and even Sarah Palin. Following Opinion pieces and Campaign coverage, Ed’s Obamateurisms clearly struck the right chord with visitors to Hot Air, rounding out the clearly popular categories. Not so popular? Posts about Christine O’Donnell, Robots, and Religion.
Preferred Vice Presidential Candidate of Hot Air Readers
Taking the prize for Best Politician Hopefully in a Supporting Role, Florida Senator-elect Marco Rubio topped the vice presidential list by a squeaker over crowd favorite Chris Christie, 564 votes to 523 votes. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal came in a close third with 517 votes. Taking fourth, fifth, and sixth were Congressman Paul Ryan, former Governor Sarah Palin, and Florida Congressman-elect Allen West, in that order. (Note Palin and West; we’ll get back to them in a moment.)
And now, performance art.
Moving on.
In the category of Least Liked Topic We Specifically Polled Anyway, readers by a resounding 67% to 16% favored Christine O’Donnell over Mike Castle in their 2010 Delaware primary match-up. As for supporting a rematch with her as the nominee in 2014, readers were… less enthusiastic.
Hot Air readers are decidedly opposed to Republican candidates for President attending Politico’s Spring debate, generally preferring that the candidates refrain from participating in such an event until the end of the year.
So, back to the candidates themselves: When they cast their votes, what qualities were Hot Air readers looking for in their preferred candidate for President?
Preferred Presidential Candidate of Hot Air Readers
And the winner for Best Politician in a Hopefully Leading Role is Sarah Palin, beating Chris Christie handily and in a substantial reversal from the last poll we took at Hot Air on the topic. Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, and Mitt Romney round out the list at three, four and five.
Worth noting here is that while the “most popular President-VP ticket” would seem to be Palin-Rubio based on the results, that pairing was not the most common pairing explicitly given by Hot Air readers.
I’ve prepared a chart to help explain this. Down the left hand column is the preferred President of readers, with the highlighted box signaling which VP candidate was paired with him or her most frequently. So, Palin supporters chose Allen West most often as their VP choice. In contrast, the most popular pairing where Rubio was the VP on a ticket was when Chris Christie was the choice for President. Interesting stuff to me.
A look back at those we lost this year
Assuming there were that many, of course. Personally, I think the following groups won more Republican seats than they “lost,” but Hot Air readers have a decidedly more mixed, and basically negative, opinion of these organizations: the NRCC and NRSC.
Readers may not have liked these organizations, but they did like at least one person. A lot. In fact, so much so that this person is…
The Hot Air Readership Republican of the Year
And the HARRY goes to…
Sarah Palin. It wasn’t particularly close, either. Lots of voters commented that while they couldn’t vote for her for President, she was undoubtedly the biggest Republican mover and shaker of 2010. When I argued last year that the then-former governor Palin ought to “run for Congress” in 2010, I believed that she would play an enormously important role in winning back Republican seats. I noted at the time,
[W]hile Palin’s resignation certainly risks her own personal ambitions for higher office, it also opens up her hand to do the some of the free-wheeling, unfiltered campaigning she couldn’t do last year, with the prime beneficiary the center-right cause. If Palin wants to strengthen her political future, I can’t think of a better way to do it.
Obviously, not all of the 63 seats I predicted Republicans would take were directly a result of her interventions, but Palin drove much of the political conversation over the last 18 months. That’s not an easy feat for a typical politician, but Sarah Palin is not your typical politician. Whatever you think of the Mama Grizzly, you have got to respect her tenaciousness.
She got my vote, and clearly a lot — and I mean a lot – of Hot Air readers cast their ballots likewise.
That concludes this First Annual HARRY Awards ceremony. Hope you enjoyed it. I’m on Twitter. And I’ll leave you with this diddy as a parting tribute to the most endangered among us: http://www.youtube.com/v/QOvIot-i6rY?fs=1&hl=en_US
Until next post.
Thanks for the ping, Onyx. I’ve added the Hot Air Presidential Candidate preference vote to my rapidly expanding document of Sarah’s numbers.
Short of an actual primary vote, we can look to other measurements being compiled of her popularity and chances of success in the 2012 election. I’m snagging every one that I find here, and making one big HTML doc out of it.
I’ll put it up as a stand-alone post soon.
Oh, that will be delightful.
Be sure to let me so know and I will ping her List.
Coming from you I anticipate it’ll be one to bookmark and savour.
Roger that!
“I don’t think Christie will join the Palin ticket. He doesn’t like her.”
Wonder why he invited Sarah and Todd to sit with him at the Jets game then?
- JP
“I don’t think Christie will join the Palin ticket. He doesn’t like her.”
Wonder why he invited Sarah and Todd to sit with him at the Jets game then?
- JP
Favorite topic of the year is Christie? NO WAY - it’s been Palin non stop with article after article after article....
Palin / West sounds just fine to me.
Glad folks are thinking this way.
Indeed. Somehow, all those snarky posts/threads against Palin didn’t work at all. Lately, I’m no longer pond of visiting HA.
AP must be fuming mad then. But no problem. Ed Morrissey is always there to console him.
BWA HA HA HA!
And I don’t think Palin will take him for VP.
Palin is very very much pond of these two guys: DeMint and Jindal.
I don’t link to Hot Air. I associate it with that awful Allahputz.
I prefer Jindal over Demint, simply because we need that senate seat occupied by someone we could rely on.
I don't know.
What's your opinion of his answers here about her? (Starts at the 1 min. 14 sec. point.
I believe he was 'recruited' to tell her not to run.
I swear I read something to that effect, or perhaps it was just alluded to in a blog I read...but makes sense to me after seeing his later reaction to a question about her.
CHRISTIE ENDORSED MIKE CASTLE!!!
He also allowed five “Medical pot” ( yeaaaaaaaah, right ), storefronts to open in Jersey.
You are correct, t-dude, that speculation said that Christie was dispensed by the GOP-E to talk her out of running, FWIW.
President Palin? Gov. Christie Rolls His Eyes.
Presidential nominees and VP's have hated one another before --- Lyndon Baines Johnson and John Fitzgerald Kennedy to cite one triumphant duo, so Sarah Palin and Chris Christie wouldn't be the first, but Christie is not a conservative by any stretch of the imagination, so I can't see her choosing him in the first place!
Then Palin/Jindal.
An American-born Indian-American Vice President could help us gain India as a major ally.
BTTT
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