The reason Ron Paul won the straw poll is because he had a booth at CPAC where he registered attendees to vote and Palin didn't.
Admittedly, other people in the straw poll also had booths at the even where they registered attendees to vote also but in the final analysis, only about 2,500 of the 10,000 or so attendees voted.
In other words, this straw poll is a straw dog.
A straw dog poll.
Translation: Paul's people have the ground game, motivation, and organizational skills to win, while Palin's amen corner is too busy attending carefully controlled paid speeches.