The Fred Heads say when someone else than Fred wins a straw poll that they are meaningless. I believe all polls should be treated as meaningless. The sample of the straw poll is two small and too localized to be meaningful.
Ravenstar
>> I believe all polls should be treated as meaningless.
A convenient position for someone supporting a candidate whose poll numbers are within the margin of error of ZERO.
I wonder if you’d have a similar opinion if Hunter was doing better.
Scientific polls - when questions are correctly drafted, and the sample is large enough and appropriately randomized - are meaningful statistical samples of the opinions of the voting population at large.
Straw polls, internet polls, text-message polls, etc. are not randomized, not scientific, and entirely useless for anything other than entertainment.
The vast majority of the voting population doesn’t care about Duncan Hunter.
H
Okay, so you really don’t know what the Ames straw poll is all about. Fair enough.
Straw polls as a whole are basically meaningless. The Ames poll, however, historically serves as a way for lower tier candidates to get noticed and make their way to the 1st tier. (You know, like Mike Huckabee managed to do from his performance at Ames???!!!)
So, the idea was for Duncan Hunter to do well there and get noticed. And he showed up to campaign. Know where he finished? Well, after participating in the event, he finished behind all of the ones who DIDN’T EVEN SHOW UP!! (Except McCain). Only one other candidate that participated did worse: John Cox.
Duncan Hunter’s ONE chance to pull himself out of obscurity passed him by on that fine August day. There will be no other chances like Ames. If you guys think he’s gonna pull off winning SC, you’re worse off than I thought.