Posted on 10/20/2007 1:41:59 PM PDT by freespirited
Mitt Romney won the Family Research Council Values Voters' Summit straw poll in Washington Saturday, barely beating out Mike Huckabee with just 30 more votes.
Romney garnered 1595 votes to Huckabee's 1565 in the poll of conservative activists. Ron Paul was third with 865 and Fred Thompson was fourth with 564 votes. No vote count has been announced for Rudy Giuliani.
Romney spoke at the summit Friday and called for ending the "marriage penalty" and decreasing out-of-wedlock birth.
In a veiled hit at his rival, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and his more liberal positions on gay rights and abortion, Romney said, "We won’t win the White House with only two out of three or one out of three… We’re not going to beat Hillary Clinton by acting like Hillary Clinton."
Romney reiterated his belief that "two parents are the ideal setting for raising a child." On abortion, Romney declared he would be "a pro-life president," acknowledging that he was a "convert to this cause," referencing his 2005 change from an "effectively pro-choice" position to a pro-life stance.
More than 2,000 conservative activists attended the summit and heard from the Republican presidential field over the last two days.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said 5,776 votes were cast in the straw poll by voting in person, online or by mail. Romney's campaign actively petitioned supporters to vote online whether or not they had attended the conference.
The straw poll is non-binding, unscientific, and does not necessarily reflect the social conservative movement as a whole.
The following three questions were on the straw poll ballot:
1. Which of the following candidates for president would you be most likely to vote for?
RESULTS: Romney-1595 Huckabee-1565 Paul-865 Thompson-564
2. Who of the following candidates would be least acceptable to you as President of the United States? (results not yet announced)
3. Please indicate which issue is the most important in determining your opinion of the candidate that you will most likely vote for – choose one: RESULTS: -abortion -defending marriage -tax cuts -permanent tax relief
Actually, it looked like Romney won the 'live' vote overwhelming at the Family Values convention, but Huckabee won overwhelmingly in the online voting.
While some congrats should go to Huckabee for energizing his online supporters, Romney is the one who got overwhelmingly support from the actual event.
It also begs the question of WHERE THE HECK are these pollsters getting Republicans who say they prefer Guliani.
Personally, I know one Rudy supporter out of hundreds of Republicans I talk to near Philadelphia.
And this particular Republican has no issues in which he believes. In fact, he doesn't like church going Republicans, he says.
He simply wants to win.
| Mitt Romney | 1496 |
| Mike Huckabee | 1077 |
| Ron Paul | 840 |
| Fred Thompson | 487 |
| Sam Brownback | 271 |
| Duncan Hunter | 86 |
| Tom Tancredo | 68 |
| John McCain | 51 |
| Rudy Giuliani | 47 |
Although unscientific some things can be inferred from these and the above numbers. First, Rudy didn't make a very strong impression, at least not as the first choice, of those attending and didn't feel it worth any effort to stuff the results offsite. The same can be said for McCain. Second, Romney and Huckabee, at the least, deserve recognition for out stuffing Ron Paul on this poll. Third, there is nothing here that the Fred Heads can use for bragging points over their competition for the title of either "the social conservative" candidate or even "the southern social conservative" candidate. He was beaten on and offsite by both Romney and Huckabee. So much for Fred as an internet powerhouse; Romney tripled his take and Huckabee doubled it. A good showing at this media hyped conference would doubtless have been touted by Fred Heads as evidence their man was THE option to Rudy. Instead they'll have to listen to Romney and Huckabee both make such claims. And, since Mitt has money to spin his case and Mike doesn't, Romney's spin will win out. For better or worse, this is the most hyped straw poll since Iowa and Mitt got a lot of mileage there. This will move him up somewhat, and mainly from the undecideds and Fred leaners. Huckabee will use this to keep his hopeless campaign alive longer, again mainly at Fred's expense.
I think some of the offsite votes were mailed in so Brownback could have done some stuffing before dropping out.
Atlanta claims that if their drought continues they'll run out of water in 80 days. Iowa votes in 75 days... Fred is running out of time to get started. Patience is hard to sell when we were told he didn't need to start with the rest of the candidates because he'd come out like at cat 5 political hurricane when he finally did start. It is hard to accurately judge candidate strength prior to actual voting, but if you accepted the claims of his fans Fred should have been singing in the rain today at this event. Instead the rains skipped Fred today and Mitt and Mike are dancing.
As a separate issue the size of Huckabee's seemingly large win amongst those onsite has been challenged www.evangelicalsformitt.com. They claim many pro-Romney attendees were told to cast their votes online so as to avoid the long lines to vote onsite and potential missed votes. This might just be a groundless political claim, but it might be confirmable. From the way they conducted their online voting the FRC probably could cross index online (and mail in) votes with their list of those attending and produce a vote total of those who attended regardless of where they voted. I have no idea whether they will try to do so, but with sufficient interest and some time they probably could. I have no idea as to the size of any candidate's "offsite, but attended" vote total, but I can say that as a Romney organizational ploy having some do this rings true. At the Iowa straw poll Romney was very organized in getting his supporters to vote before they did anything else, presumably to avoid both non-votes and converts to other candidates. Telling Romney leaning attendees to vote online in advance of hearing the competition would be consistent.
“No vote count has been announced for Rudy Giuliani.”
That bad?
It certainly never hurts to remind people. They have already run commercials about his previous stands. People don’t change that easily unless they have no core principles!
Voting has been open to members since AUGUST
So since August they have been able to generate 4832 votes. This has got to be the biggest non story around. How many voted out of the total population. And how much did mitt spend to win. :) LOL
It doesn’t really matter if Romney or Huckabee one. The REAL story out of this poll is that Thompson lost.
No the real story is, that in three months, mitt was only able to buy so few votes, and huckbee was able to dupe so many of the few.
Correction: It doesn’t really matter if Romney or Huckabee won.
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I've never been more disappointed in you. For shame.
No, it's the opposite. When both live, on-site votes and online votes were included, Romney beat Huck 1595 to 1565. When only the actual event votes are counted, Huck beat Romney 488 to 99.
I agree Thompson’s campaign staff must be maajorly disappointed by doing so badly in this poll. I mean Fred’s supposed to be the great conservative, the next Reagan right?
Fred is a big fat zero so far.
I must not be a “values voter” if Ron Paul scored third in this.
Wait, you mean the ones who are suposedly about to bolt third party are easily duped?
Tell me again why this group is so important?
Aaaand, that’s why I’m teetering on the brink between “could hold my nose for Romney” and “will vote third-party if Romney wins.”
I’m trying to keep emotion out of it, but what it comes down to is that if Romney supporters are so vehemently against Thompson’s positions that they would rather see Huck win, then Romney is probably not the candidate for me under any conditions. I’ve changed my mind on this a number of times, and I may again...but that’s where I stand now.
Because approximately equal numbers of pubbies and donks will pull the party lever no matter what. So elections are decided by those who are willing to cross party lines, or those who stay home or vote third-party if they're not happy with the candidate.
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