by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
Upon hearing that Mitt Romney won today's Ames vote buying contest straw poll with only 31% of the vote, my first reaction was, "wow, that's a rather low total. the combination of Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee would have defeated Romney." But then I went and looked at previous results. In 1995, Bob Dole (R-KS) and Phil Gramm (R-TX) finished in an exact tie with 23.6%. In 1999, George W. Bush, who by all accounts was the only serious GOP candidate other than McCain (who literally wasn't on the ballot), won with the exact same total. In 1987, Pat Robertson took 33.6% of the vote. His 13.5% margin of victory is actually the largest margin of the last four contested straw polls. So Romney appears to have fared about as well as, if not slightly better than, other straw poll winners by historical standards.
I doubt that the 33.4% earned by Brownback and Huckabee means very much; the straw poll is mostly a matter of brute force. After all, no one thought the 35% earned by Steve Forbes and Liddy Dole (!) in 1999 represented a strong "anybody but Dubya" contingent in the GOP.
I will note that turnout was pleasantly low, or perhaps depressingly low if you're a Republican. Turnout is down 40% since 1999. If 40% of hardcore conservatives can't bring themselves to vote for a Republican in November, it's not going to be close.
-signed, not Ezra Klein, dagnabbit
