I wouldn’t be surprised, Paul’s campaign for liberty gave some major discounts on tickets and helped fly and bus in college kids and assorted tards.
And Romney too. Romney has been busing his people in since 2007 at least. His dollars were able to win CPAC in 2007, 2008, 2009, but his dollars were unable to buy the victory in 2010 and 2011. Both this year and last, Ron Paul finished 1st, Mitt Romney 2nd, by roughly the same margin, 30% or so to low 20s.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/02/11/cpac-straw-poll-not-predictive-of-eventual-nominee
Even back in 2007, the news organizations noticed that Mitt was spending money to try to win.
http://www.nysun.com/national/romney-giuliani-top-conservative-straw-poll/49736/
From 2007
“Mr. Romney ran an intensive ground operation at CPAC, flooding the convention with college-aged campaign workers — paying many of their registration fees and even busing some of them in and paying for their hotel rooms, according to a report in The New York Times — wearing blue Romney shirts, carrying posters for their candidate, and voting in the straw poll. He also spoke yesterday afternoon to rousing applause and hosted a reception for conference attendees yesterday evening.”