CPAC-American Encore-Twitter Straw Poll: Sarah Palin 58%, Ted Cruz 21%, Scott Walker 13%

By Gary P Jackson

With the start of CPAC, an online CPAC-American Encore-Twitter straw poll went live. Over the course of the event voters were given a list of 16 candidates to choose from. The way the poll worked is every time someone hit the link to tweet support for their choice for President in 2016, a vote was counted. The tweet included the hashtag CPAC2015 along with the candidate’s name.

The top results from the straw poll are as follows:

Sarah Palin 58%

Ted Cruz 21%

Scott Walker 13%

Rand Paul 8%

As with any straw poll, this is NOT scientific, and merely reflects the sentiments of those who took time to vote. [just like the live in-person vote that took place at CPAC]

A very strong and consistent showing for Governor Palin in this poll, which was live well before she had given her outstanding speech. We don’t know if Governor Palin will actually run in 2016. She has not ruled it out. And as her show on the Sportsman Channel is still in first run, don’t look for anything until the Summer, after the new season wraps, at the earliest.

Follow American Encore on Twitter.

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Total Dominance! Red State Straw Poll: Sarah Palin 52.4% Herman Cain 21.4% Ron Paul 10.2% Rick Perry 7.3%

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.

Sarah Palin Wins August Hot Air Straw Poll With Highest Percentage Yet

By Gary P Jackson

Sarah Palin has won every Hot Air presidential straw poll ever presented. And she has won them very convincingly. This month is no different. With 2309 votes Sarah takes 40% of the vote compared to second place Rick Perry’s 33% with 1888 votes. Support for Michele Bachmann has collapsed. She only gets 442 votes, 8%.

This month HA brings back the Vice President question with some interesting results. Congressman Allen West is usually the run-away favorite in these things, but this time Senator Marco Rubio crushes the competition with a solid 32% of the vote. West comes in second with 13%. My guess is the debt ceiling debate changes some minds, as Rubio was out front and center against the deal, and West was for it.

The second choice presidential candidate for those surveyed is Rick Perry, with 24%.

For full results click here.

Ace of Spades Straw Poll: Sarah Palin Wins Big, Clobbers Rick Perry

By Gary P Jackson

This is delicious. Ace is a notorious Palin bashing RINO so it’s interesting [and a bit entertaining] that he conducts a reader straw poll and Sarah Palin wins it big. With Almost 10,000 votes cast, it’s Sarah Palin beating Rick Perry 46.6% to 38.51%. Michele Bachmann checks in at third place with 5.21%. Mitt Romney finishes fourth 2.96% of the vote.

Again this is a website where the publisher never misses a chance to say something negative about Palin, and yet ….

We see the same thing over at Hot Air, where Sarah Palin has never lost a presidential straw poll since the website has been polling for 2012.

Michael Sheppard points out that there has been a huge shift in votes since Ace’s June polling:

Of particular interest are the changes from the June poll which had Perry in first place on 31.1% Palin in second on 30.5% and Bachmann, then the flavor of the month at 17.8%. As can be seen her support has utterly collapsed.

We are seeing this in the national polling as well, anytime Sarah Palin and/or Rick Perry is included in the poll, Bachmann’s numbers collapse.

What this poll, and others like it continue to show is the current field of announced candidates are putting people’s feet to sleep. America is waiting for a true leader with a solid record and the ability to get things done to join the race.

The results:

Sarah Palin Keeps Her 9 Month Long Hot Air Straw Poll Crush-a-Thon Streak Intact

By Gary P Jackson

This is actually the second Hot Air straw poll this month. The first one showed virtually the same results as this one, Sarah Palin crushing all comers, but the increasingly anti-conservative, anti-Palin website chose to spin some of her best results ever, as somehow a bad thing, and I was laughing so hard I simply couldn’t type a response to Patrick Ishmael’s drivel, and didn’t publish the results.

Here’s a link to that survey, you compare it with the latest, and find that Sarah’s support is once again stronger than ever. And, once again, Ishmael looked for an angle, so we get this nonsense in the new poll results:

The Approval results are in. Leading the pack when Presidential supporters are removed is Paul Ryan, followed by Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, John Bolton and Herman Cain.

Now Paul Ryan, whose budget plan is supported by Sarah …. she was the first to get on board …. is not a candidate for President, and has said in no uncertain terms that he will not be a candidate, and yet ….

Ishmael uses a plot device known as “average without presidential support” to create his little narrative. In other words, he bounces those who approve of a candidate, but do not support them for president, vs the ratings for the same candidates among those who do support them as a presidential candidate. This is how he is able to show someone who isn’t a candidate and will not be a candidate leading all comers, or so he CLAIMS, thus getting the headline he wants. This is a rather meaningless number though.

Either way, among actual and prospective candidates, Sarah Palin is the strongest, and getting stronger. In the presidential vote, out of a long list of 15 candidates [plus “other“] Sarah gets 38% of the vote, with Rick Perry, like Sarah, an undeclared candidate getting 23% of the vote.

Out of actual declared candidates, only Michele Bachmann breaks into double digits with 10% of the vote. Mitt Romney gets a whopping 7% of the vote.

The survey also looks at overall approval. They use a sliding scale 1-7, with 1 being the worst, and 7 being the best or “highly approve.”

Again, Sarah Palin is far and beyond the leader here with 49% rating her a 7 a “highly approve” rating. By contrast, out of potential or announced candidates, Rick Perry comes in second with 25%, and Bachmann 22%. The non-candidate, never will be candidate, Paul Ryan has a 30% “highly approve” rating. So much for Ishmael’s meme du jour.

Hot Air also has a couple of individual match-ups.

The most telling is the Palin/Bachmann contest. In the survey taken over the Fouth of July weekend it was Palin 52.18% Bachmann 47.82%. Now that folks have had almost a month of watching Bachmann, being Bachmann, the results are quite different. It’s now Palin 62% Bachmann 38%. It seems the more people see of Bachmann, the less inclined they are to support her, at least among Hot Air’s readership, 49% of which call themselves conservative with another 32% calling themselves “very conservative.”

HA also matches Rick Perry up with Tim Pawlenty, with Perry getting 78% over Pawlenty’s 22%. No surprise there.

In a Palin vs Perry match-up Sarah beats Rick 52% to 48% Which is the exact number Sarah was beating Bachmann by at the first of the month. I can’t quite bring myself to call my own governor a “flavor of the month” but once people see Rick Perry in action, and look into his record, look for his numbers to go down, though not as bad as Bachmann’s. [if he actually runs]

As always, straw polls are what they are, and any poll this early is little more than interesting entertainment. But they do show trends, and Sarah Palin has crushed all comers in these Hot Air polls since last November. In fact, her support only gets stronger. Hot Air has taken a leftward lurch, and become more of a GOP establishment house organ, since it’s founder Michelle Malkin sold the blog to the Salem group, but their readers are politically savvy and conservative. They are a very good representation of the base of the Republican Party.

The take away from the latest poll is no one is excited about the current Republican field. It’s very weak and has no one that can rally the troops to fight the Obama regime. None of the current declared candidates can beat Barack Obama. Rick Perry will definitely make a splash should he join the fray, but as people realize he is more of an establishment candidate, Donald Rumsfeld has been advising him, and Karl Rove is downright giddy at the prospect of Perry running, the bloom will come off the rose.

Sarah Palin is the only person who can rally the base and reach out to independents. Her record of governing in Alaska shows she knows how to work with a very diverse group to get incredible things done. As this latest polling shows once again, Sarah Palin has a base of support that would follow her through hell with a bucket of gasoline in each hand if that’s what it took. While it’s likely conservatives will hold their nose and vote for whoever the nominee is, should it not be Sarah, or even Rick Perry, folks will actually get out and campaign, knock doors, make phone calls, and so on, for Sarah Palin!

Before we go further, here are the results:

Ishmael also said this over the Fourth:

Whoever emerges between Perry and Bachmann will have the electoral advantage on Palin, who it appears has serious electoral maneuvering problems even among the base. Palin’s strength is the excitement of her supporters and the high commitment of those supporters to her. Her weakness is, simply, that there won’t be enough of them to carry her through the current field of primary candidates. I wrote back in 2009 that Palin’s most likely role in the 2012 cycle would be as a coronator. I still believe that’s basically right.

Ahh, the old “Sarah Palin should be a cheerleader and drag someone else’s sorry ass across the finish line” ploy. If you are so weak you need a kingmaker to get you through a campaign, you are too weak to be a king. Anyone who can be a kingmaker, can damned sure be the king.[or QUEEN]

From his ramblings, it’s obvious Ishmael doesn’t even read his own polls! Though he stopped asking the question once he learned the answer [over and over] his polling found that Palin supporters are strong and unwavering. Recent Gallup polling shows 52% Of Sarah Palin’s Supporters Certain “No Chance They’ll Change” Romney? Only 30% which backs up the results of earlier HA polls.

It seems not to matter to Ishmael that Palin has convincingly won every poll he’s taken as well. Ishmael requires all participants to include their zip code, and was publishing a nifty map that shows where a candidate’s support came from. It always showed Sarah’s support strong nationwide. This is likely why he no longer publishes the map, since his own research destroys the meme he’s trying to create.

Oh, and back to the cheerleader thing. You know who the cheerleaders are out of this bunch, actual cheerleaders?

Michele Bachman:

Rick Perry:

(THE AGGIELAND)

Rick Perry, far right, in the 1971 Texas A&M yearbook, The Aggieland. This is a photo of the Aggie Yell Leaders.

By contrast, Sarah Palin was point guard and co-captain of her team, and took the team to the state championship, scoring the winning shot. [on a broken foot no less] She’s number 22 in the photo:

Can we finally put this “cheerleader” nonsense to bed? Sarah Palin is a born leader. She successfully led a ball team, a city, and a state. She’s a real winner, and a champion. Winners become champions because they know how to win. Sarah Palin knows exactly how to beat Barack Obama and win the 2012 election. Better still, she has the skill to govern the nation once she gets there.

Sarah Palin Crushes All For 6th Straight Month In Hot Air Straw Poll

By Gary P Jackson

Hot Air runs a monthly straw poll of it’s readership. Once again Sarah Palin dominates a crowed field of Candidates. Rick Perry comes in second, Herman Cain a distant third. All of the rest are in the single digits, or worse:

There’s a neat interactive map at the website that shows where the candidates’ support comes from nationwide. Sarah Palin has supporters throughout the nation. For complete information click here.

This comes of the heals of national polling that shows Sarah is tied with Mitt Romney for 1st place, and crushing him among Conservatives. She also has the highest favorability rating of any candidate.

Sarah Palin Dominates Hot Air Presidential Straw Poll (Again)

By Gary P Jackson

Is Sarah Palin ready to join in with all of those card playing Republican Presidents above? We certainly think so, and so do the readers of Hot Air, the internet’s top Conservative website. For the 5th straight month Sarah has won the reader’s poll. And like the other 4 polls, it wasn’t even close. Over 6000 people voted for their choice for President and Vice President, with Allen West by far the choice for VP, out of a crowed field of contenders.

There are a lot of online polls, but not all polling is equal. Unlike some that can be spammed, Patrick Ishmael, who handles these for the website, has set up several safeguards to prevent cheating. Also, unlike most, these polls are consistently open for only a few days, not a month, or more. Regular readers are aware of this and vote consistently.

One thing else we like about the way Patrick does these polls is the information he gathers as well as the way he presents the results. This month he created a cool interactive map that shows where these votes came from. Looking at the various candidates, it’s very clear that Sarah Palin enjoys support from from every region of the country, strong support. Remember, these are Republican voters. If this polling is even close to representative, the Republican nomination is hers for the asking.

Click here to see the map, and then click on each candidate. It’s a real eye opener.

And now for the Results:

For President:

For Vice President:

Sarah Palin’s Winning Streak Intact With March Victory In Townhall Straw Poll

Congratulations to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin who won the March Townhall/HotAir Straw Poll with 16.91% of the vote!

Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann was the mover and shaker this month, gaining 1.47 percentage points. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie saw the biggest decrease in support, losing 1.42 percentage points.

By Gary P Jackson

For the third month in a row Sarah Palin has won the Townhall/HotAir Republican Straw Poll. Though these polls are not scientific, they are an indicator of the support a candidate enjoys. Looking at the rest of the field tells the tale.

You can vote in the April polling here.

Now for the results:

Sarah Palin Crushes All Comers In American Spectator Straw Poll

By Gary P Jackson

More straw polling is coming out this morning, and once again, Sarah Palin just crushes all comers. As we reported earlier, she was the overwhelming favorite of Hot Air readers, in a poll that asked some interesting questions, yielding some quite revealing answers.

Now comes the results from the straw poll conducted by American Spectator Magazine.

While online polls don’t usually excite us one way or the other, the American Spectator poll, just like the Hot Air poll, is noteworthy because the website went above and beyond to insure there was only one vote per customer. This poll required both a valid e-mail account and manually entering a coded text for the vote to count.

We’re not all that surprised by the huge margin of victory by Sarah. She usually tops these polls. What is surprising is the fact all of the perceived “front runners“, Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich, et al, couldn’t even beat “other” in this poll. Sarah got 45.85 percent of the vote, and the number two vote getter, Herman Cain, couldn’t break ten percent. He ended up with 7.13 percent of the vote.

One thing to remember, these are not scientific polls by any stretch of the imagination. However, they do gauge enthusiasm among the core group who will decide who the 2012 Republican nominee will be. It should also be noted that editorially, Hot Air and American Spectator are not “fans” of Sarah Palin, and most of the content about her takes on a negative feel. [even when it’s positive news] Of course, readers of both websites know the authors get pounded pretty hard in their comments sections because of it.

That’s kind of the point of the whole thing. Enthusiasm for Sarah Palin to be our next President is sky high among the base of the party. Enthusiasm is what win elections.

If we have one real sticking point in these polls, it would be the number of candidates. I know there are a ton of names out there being tossed about, but many have said “no” to a run, or are fringe candiates who have no shot at all. I’d like to see some major straw polling that just included those who are highly likely to run, and have a legitimate shot. A “top 10” if you will. It would be interesting to see how that would shake out.

With that said, here are the results:

Sarah Palin 45.85%

Herman Cain 7.13%

Mitch Daniels 6.00%

Ron Paul 5.89%

Chris Christie 5.77%

Other 4.87%

Jim DeMint 3.55%

Mike Huckabee 3.12%

Mitt Romney 2.85%

Newt Gingrich 2.38%

Paul Ryan 2.14%

Tim Pawlenty 1.72%

Michele Bachmann 1.60%

Mike Pence 1.44%

Haley Barbour 1.17%

Rick Santorum 0.97%

Rand Paul 0.94%

Marco Rubio 0.74%

Rick Perry 0.74%

John Thune 0.66%

Gary Johnson 0.47%

Post CPAC Straw Poll: Sarah Palin And Allen West Are “Winning The Future” … Big Time!

By Gary P Jackson

After the circus at CPAC, including the embarrassment of Ron Paul winning yet another straw poll, a reality check is sorely needed.

As usual, Ron Paul’s political action committee purchased large blocks of tickets to CPAC, reselling them at a serious loss, so his rowdy bunch could get to DC and vote for him. This is standard operating procedure for the good doctor. Mitt Romney, who finished second, has been known to buy a straw poll or two himself.

With that in mind, Patrick Ishmael over at Hot Air put together a straw poll of his own. We don’t normally report on online polls, but Patrick took extra care to make sure there was only one vote per customer. While not a scientific poll, it does a great amount of enthusiasm for Sarah Palin, among readers of one of the top center-right websites.

Sarah garnered 37 percent of the votes, with the closest competitor, Chris Christie, coming in a very distant second at 11%.

Maintaining her position from our last poll in December, Sarah Palin again stomps the Hot Air Presidential field by a wide and comfortable margin.

[ …. ]

Since this latest poll was initially faced with a fair amount of ACORN-style fake-votery, let me say up front that Palin’s numbers are absolutely legitimate: her block of voters is one of the most active on the web, and they turned out in force for this survey.

In second place is Chris Christie, who also fell in behind Palin in December. Third place is, surprisingly, Mitch Daniels, doubling his percentage take from 5% of the vote last time to 10% this time. A surprising fourth place also goes to Herman Cain, the only candidate really in the race right now, at 8%. I think there’s little doubt that Daniels and Cain benefited from a sort of CPAC-bounce; Christie, still a GOP rock star, may have been hurt by being out of the limelight in the last couple of months. Mitt Romney comes in at fifth, slightly strengthening over his last showing, from 5% to 6%.

Besides the obvious “who do you want to be President?” question, Patrick crafted some interesting side questions as well. One of those asked: “How committed are you to your candidate?“:

Online zeal does not necessarily make for eventual Presidents, but it may say something about commitment and a little about the size of the movement. (But not always.) Sarah Palin’s numbers bear out both of these points, notably the former one; while 54% of the average candidate’s supporters consider themselves “very committed” backers, 82% of Sarah Palin voters consider themselves “very committed.”

This is an interesting metric. It confirms what most Palin supporters already knew. Once you join the team, you are not likely to look at other options. Sarah Palin’s long record of success, and compelling history, translates into strong support. The kind that will work hard in 2012 to make things happen.

Something else. Since the other candidate’s strongest supporters barely break the 50% mark, the chances for Sarah Palin to pick up even more support, once she starts actually campaigning is very good. Better than the rest, for certain.

The poll also asks who should be Vice President. This wasn’t close either, nor surprising. Allen West is the overwhelmingly choice for her Vice President!.

That would make for quite the formidable ticket.

Check out all of the results from the poll here.