"About 7,500 votes were cast in The Weekly Standard's third presidential poll of the year, twice as many as in the poll a couple of months ago.
In that straw poll (and, to repeat, these are obviously not scientific surveys, but rather polls of those who chose to participate), Scott Walker, was far ahead, with almost half the first place votes. He still leads, but has come back to the field some. He's got 30% of the first place ballots, and appears on an impressive 69% of all ballots as a first, second or third choice.
Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have surged to second and third place, with 24% and 18% first place choices respectively; Rubio appears on 51% of ballots, Cruz on 45%. These are the big three on this week's survey: No one else gets more than 5% of first place votes, or appears on more than 18% of ballots overall."...
"In results that were stunning for several reasons, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was the runaway winner in a "straw poll" of Republican presidential favorites at Pennsylvania’s largest-ever gathering of conservatives, the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, on Friday and Saturday.
With the "straw ballots" counted and released on Saturday, Walker was an easy winner with 91 votes, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with 58 votes. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was third with 56 votes.
Since the first PLC back in 1989, the group has become the most-attended and most-watched conclave of conservatives in the Keystone State. Fueled by the recent campaigns of conservative Sen. Pat Toomey (R.-Pa.) and by the rise of the "tea party movement" over the past five years, the 2015 PLC attracted a record 700-plus participants to the Radisson Hotel in Harrisburg.
Walker’s showing among this group was particularly impressive in that many PLC participants freely acknowledged to Newsmax that they had never met the governor but admired him tremendously for successfully standing up to organized labor over reform of pensions and healthcare for public employees."....