Format
The poll takes place among attendees of a fundraising dinner benefiting the Iowa Republican Party. Before the vote, each candidate is given a chance to make a short speech to the attendees.
Non-Republicans are allowed to vote in the Ames Straw Poll. However, all voters must be at least 16 1/2 years of age, be legal residents of the state of Iowa or a student attending an Iowa university/college, and purchase a ticket priced at $30, however most campaigns pay the fee for their supporters.
As a straw poll, the Ames Straw Poll’s results are non-binding and have no official effect on the presidential primaries.
Since its founding, the winner of the Ames Straw Poll has gone on to win the Republican presidential nomination just two out of five times.
Criticisms
Beginning with the 1999 Ames Straw Poll, all voters were required to show proof of legal residence in Iowa.
In 2007, the Ames Straw Poll was criticized for having only 14,302 voters participating compared to about 23,000 voters eight years earlier in the 1999 polls, and for failing to have three of the four leading candidates participate in the poll, Rudolph Giuliani, John McCain and Fred Thompson. Consequently the votes received by Mitt Romney and second-place finisher Mike Huckabee have failed to demonstrate the consequence of full competition among all candidates.
The poll has been criticized for heavily favoring better-funded candidates, as better-funded candidates are able to afford transportation costs to bus in more supporters and to reimburse those supporters for expenses.