The Family Research Council held a conference and invited the GOP presidential contenders to speak. Then they had a straw poll. The poll was open to people on the internet that payed as little as a dollar and joined FRC Action. The FRC was kind enough to break out the poll results by those that were onsite at the conference and those that voted online. And the numbers were quite different.
Here are the total results:
Mitt Romney – 1,595 votes — 27.62%
Mike Huckabee – 1,565 votes — 27.15%
Ron Paul — 865 votes — 14.98%
Fred Thompson — 564 votes — 9.77%Undecided — 329 votes — 5.70%
Sam Brownback – 297 votes — 5.14%
Duncan Hunter — 140 votes — 2.42%
Tom Tancredo — 133 votes — 2.30%
Rudy Giuliani — 107 votes 1.85%
John McCain — 81 votes — 1.40%And here are the on-site results:
Mike Huckabee — 488 votes — 51.26%
Mitt Romney — 99 votes — 10.40%
Fred Thompson — 77 votes — 8.09%
Tom Tancredo — 65 votes — 6.83%%
Rudy Giuliani — 60 votes — 6.30%
Duncan Hunter — 54 votes — 5.67%
John McCain — 30 votes — 3.15%
Sam Brownback — 26 votes — 2.73%
Ron Paul — 25 votes — 2.63%
Undecided — 11 votes — 1.16%
Unsurprisingly, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney were well organized online. But for the people that actually sat and listened to the speeches, Mike Huckabee was the clear and unambiguous winner. In both pools, McCain and Guiliani were dead in the water. Can a Republican win the general election if they get almost no support from the religious right? And, even if, say, Guiliani can win with moderates and independents, what will it do to down ticket Republicans?
Good questions.
