Posted on 10/01/2011 4:32:05 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
By Gary P Jackson.
I find this truly and absolutely delicious.
There have been a lot of presidential straw polls since silly season started, some going all the way back to a year ago this month. I’ve seen all kinds of results, but I’ve never seen such a blow-out victory for any candidate.
The website Red State ran an interesting poll in September. They asked readers who their first choice was for the Republican nomination for President, then ask who would be second choice through fifth choice. The results for first choice:
Sarah Palin 52.4% Herman Cain 21.4% Ron Paul 10.2% Rick Perry 7.3% Mitt Romney 2.4% Newt Gingrich 2.0% Michele Bachmann 1.1%. None of the other candidates were able to garner as much as 1% of the vote.
Red State did something different, telling voters they could only vote for a person once. In other words, you couldn’t vote for your candidate for first choice, then go on to vote for them as second choice and so on. They told voters that ballots with multiple votes for the same person would be voided.
It’s no surprise then, that Herman Cain was the overwhelming second choice candidate, with 33.7% of the vote. Newt Gingrich was third choice with 19.9% of the vote. Page four sees Newt again with 16.8%. Page five has Newt once more winning with 13.2%.
Out of the five chances for his fans, Rick Perry never gets more than 9.3% of the vote.
As a Palin supporter, this poll is very gratifying. Red State has been little more than Rick Perry Central since the Texas Governor entered the race. Red State and it’s editor Erick Erickson have been notoriously anti-Palin since day one. In fact, Erickson totally flipped out on Friday as the end of the month, and the media hyped “drop dead date” for Sarah Palin to announce her candidacy came and went. You can read about what Sarah Palin really said here.
On Friday Erickson took to Twitter and used his website to attack Sarah Palin and her supporters on an almost hourly basis. It was rather childish, and as William A. Jacobson pointed out, wasn’t doing his candidate Rick Perry any good. Having dealt with Perry fans, Erickson’s behavior is pretty typical though. In another post Jacobson warned Perry that throwing in with the likes of Erick Erickson will do you more harm than good.
Run, don’t walk, away from people who put their own self-aggrandizement and ego ahead of your campaign’s best interests.
Good advice.
A lot of bloggers wrote about Erickson’s meltdown, but we enjoyed HillBuzz’s Kevin DuJan’s a lot!
Wow. Erik Erikson at Redstate is having a complete mental breakdown on his site today, consumed with his obsessive hatred of Sarah Palin
Read it all here.
Red State and the editor’s obsessions have certainly not helped their candidate Rick Perry, but Perry hasn’t helped his own cause either, and new national polls show him fading fast.
The Red State poll, like all straw polling, is not scientific, but is a good indicator of support. Although not a fan of Red State in any way shape or form, we feel they put in the proper safeguards to make sure this vote is legit.
In these sort of polls, it’s the trends that matter. We’ve watched these straw polls for a year now, and the one take-away is Sarah Palin wins these more often than not, and has a solid base of support that never wavers. We see other candidates get hot and then come crashing down. Sarah Palin stays strong and steady. Her support is real and stable.
It's only 'pitiful' if you think it's nothing but a lot of hot air, but it's not. Outside of a real primary vote, there aren't many ways of getting a feel for what a candidate's popularity with the voters is.
So-called 'non-scientific' polls are usually taken with a degree of caution, but when a candidate fares well in nearly all of them for well over a year, it would be foolish to discount that aggregate result.
So-called 'scientific' polls should also be taken with a grain of salt, because it's been proven time and time again that they're routinely manipulated to produce a desired result. Still - watch enough of them, for a long enough period of time, and certain patterns emerge.
Try this, for instance. Input the names of every candidate into individual Google searches and see how many returns you get for each of them. That will tell you a lot about which candidates command the most interest among the public and the chattering class.
You wouldn't necessarily use that information as a basis upon which to choose your candidate, but it's informative data, nonetheless.
The original is called, "Grand Old Gang" by Andy Thomas. Palin was later photoshopped in by others. Here's my favorite edition of that effort:
Of the top two vote-getters in this poll, only one really matters - Herman Cain. The other hasn’t declared and thus is little more than a fantasy or “would be nice”....
Cain’s the man.
I'm a big supporter, I think romney and perry are unacceptable and that Cain is the only realistic announced conservative. I just hate seeing the divide that's going on here over the whole thing. I guess I should be used to to being here since 2000, but man, we do a pretty good job of eating our own over these things.
Then again, we can't afford to let RINOs get pushed on us like mccain in 2008. Best we sort that out in short order.
I agree. Nice spot for Sarah in that empty space right in front of Ike. Puts her right in the midst of the joyful cameraderie, right where she belongs.
I didn't realize that the nomination was over.
Actually, I think that's just all in your head.
It was a poll of a certain web site.
The flavor of that certain web site determines the result. It has no correlation with the Real World outside of that web site. It is as meaningless as asking on Democratic Underground whether Ronald Reagan or Che Guevara was the greatest patriot.
Good news, though.
After Florida (4th most populous state in the U.S.) moved up it's primary, the filing deadline is now apparently October 15 and no serious candidate can throw away Florida's delegates. So, in only 14 more days, "The Tease" will finally be over and Sarah Palin will actually have to .... OH NO!..... GASP!! ....THE HORROR!! .... you know .... actually COMPETE IN THE ARENA instead of competing only in the imagination of her followers.
I agree. Nice spot for Sarah in that empty space right in front of Ike. Puts her in the midst of the joyful cameraderie, right where she belongs.
Sorry for the double post. When I clicked to post my ‘puter hung so long I didn’t realize it had actually posted. Dang newfangled contraptions!
To: Lady Lucky ...... She's playing chess. You're playing fifty-two pickup. And you're still losing.
E. Pluribus Unum, do you know what Sarah Palin is really playing?
She is playing YOU like a cheap fiddle.
The day after the Florida Primary filing deadline, you will know that ..... or, maybe you still won't.
No the nomination’s not over - of course, the top vote-getter isn’t even available for the nomination, is she? See, you have to FORMALLY ANNOUNCE first.
Having her in the poll makes as much sense as having the other Presidents shown in the paintings above in the same poll. At this point, none of them are candidates - none of them are available.
How is it an "attack" to state the truth? Sarah Palin is not a candidate for the Presidency. That may change in the future (realistically in the next 14 days), but for now, it is 100% accurate and truthful. She's not a candidate.
Seems to me the ones who are all bent out of shape and out-of-touch with reality are those insisting she is a viable candidate. Considering Palin herself has not declared herself as a candidate, makes you look pretty loopy, no?
You betcha.
You might remember that HotAir ran a little contest where they asked for photoshoppers to submit their versions of Grand Old Gang with Sarah included. As I recall, there were about eight of them published on their website. The one I posted was the best of the lot, I thought.
I wonder if Andy Thomas has ever seen it? If he has, I'll bet he agrees.
Oh dear, what will you all complain about once she's official a candidate? Have you formulated your next line of attack yet? ..... TheCornerOffice
I, for one, will not complain at all at that point.
I will congratulate her for having THE GUTS to actually COMPETE.
After that, my praise or criticism will have to do with how she actually PERFORMS in "The Arena".
I have criticized my own preferred candidate for being lazy, overconfident and not putting in the work required to be prepared for the debates. (That would be Perry.)
Once she is a candidate, Palin will then "fly or die" based on her own actual merits as a viable candidate and not on the basis of the imagination of her followers.
What I find intolerable is the fact that Palin's supporters have found excuses to attack every other Republican candidate that has had the guts to get into "The Arena" for no other reason other than the fact that their name was not "Sarah Palin". Yet, Sarah Palin remains in the spectator seats of "The Arena" instead of actually being IN "The Arena".
In case my references to "The Arena" went completely over your head, this is Theodore Roosevelt teaching you something:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." ..... Theodore Roosevelt
“Heaven forbid she doesn’t run, because if she announces she’s sitting it out, I don’t want to think of what the fallout is going to be like here. It’ll be pretty gruesome, I’d imagine.
I’m a big supporter, I think romney and perry are unacceptable and that Cain is the only realistic announced conservative. I just hate seeing the divide that’s going on here over the whole thing. I guess I should be used to to being here since 2000, but man, we do a pretty good job of eating our own over these things.
Then again, we can’t afford to let RINOs get pushed on us like mccain in 2008. Best we sort that out in short order. “
It made me almost sick to see McCain get the nomination on our side, and I was really afraid for our country when Obama won the presidency.
But maybe we needed a dose of really bad medicine to wake up the sleeping giant.
I was happy to vote for Sarah, against Obama, even though it was a futile effort in a blue state, in a stupid country, that was asleep at the wheel and almost went over the cliff (sorry about the mixed metaphors)
Well, things sure have changed since then.
People are getting educated about the founders, the constitution, the economy - I’m feeling hopeful again.
Herman Cain’s positive intensity score has been the highest every week, until the week Rick Perry announced, and Perry got a little bump - then Herman was back on top the next.
I expect that he will be back on top of that one soon, as more people find out about about Perry’s Hispanic pandering and other issues.
Closer look at Perry = less support.
Closer look at Herman = more support.
But I think Sarah’s people and Herman’s people should NOT be sniping at each other.
If she wants to wait until the very last minute to decide, that’s fine with me, given the whiplash way the campaign has been so far.
If Herman gains enough traction that she decides not to put her family through hell again, that’s OK with me.
I love and trust them both, and would happily vote for either one, in either order.
Cheers!
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