Herman Cain, Ron Paul Win Meaningless Straw Poll

Two candidates who have no realistic chance of winning the Republican nomination won the straw polls conducted at the Tea Party Patriots gathering this weekend:

Which Republican should become the next president? Herman Cain, according to a number of Tea Party activists gathered at a weekend summit in Phoenix.

Cain, a conservative talk show host and former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive, won the American Policy Summit’s presidential live straw poll on Sunday.

Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas won the summit’s online poll.

As with the CPAC poll, these results really don’t mean much of anything, especially since it’s so easy for candidates like Paul and Cain, who have no broad support in the GOP, to engineer a victory. Although I suppose it will cause many people reading the news to ask — who the heck is Herman Cain?

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Dodd says:

    “Meaningless straw poll” is redundant, Doug.

  2. John Peabody says:

    I think that national elections are just a business for 90% of the participants…it’s just a means to another gig…this goes for politicians as well as the pundits (at all levels). I think people have polls, debates, etc., just to keep the game going. This is behind early primaries, and everything else.

  3. Have A Nice G.A. says:

    Who the heck is Herman Cain?

    Doug?

  4. Patrick T. McGuire says:

    Two candidates who have no realistic chance of winning the Republican nomination

    Doug, just for the record, what was your prediction about a Republican winning the Senate seat in Massachusetts?

  5. muffler says:

    There is no tea party…. it’s a corporate creation. It is the corporate party.

  6. Scott says:

    So, we’ve been hearing for nearly two years that Tea Partyers are racists. How odd that a bunch of racist, knuckle dragging hicks would vote for a black conservative to be the winner of their straw poll.

    Either they’re color blind, or the main stream media narrative about Tea Party racism was an invented crock of B.S. all along. I’m going with the latter.

  7. MattJ says:

    I agree that the chances of either Cain or Paul winning the Republican nomination are very, very low. However, as a disgruntled Republican voter much more sympathetic to the Tea Party than to the Republican Party right now, I would say that the wins signify that the Tea Party wing is not satisfied at all with the current crop of likely Republican candidates. These results seem to me to be good news for Obama or any other Democrat considering a primary run against him.

  8. Rick Sincere says:

    I was going to ask if there’s any such thing as a “meaningful” straw poll, but then I saw that Dodd beat me to it.