Who Really Won?
By now you have seen the results of the FRC Value Voters Straw Poll. If not, I’ll copy them here one more time for your viewing pleasure at the end of my post.
From the beginning I was worried about the availability of online voting…especially when the only prerequisite for voting was a donation of just one dollar. Granted, it was a level playing field. Everybody could participate. HOWEVER!
My question to those running the event is how they expect to draw any conclusions from the results of a vote that did not screen its participants? This was a Value Voters Summit straw poll. The goal of this straw poll, logically, was to gauge the level of support for different candidates from amongst value voters. By opening up the vote to just any person off the street, without any defining factors required, the leaders of this event certainly got poll results. Can they say for certainty that the results came from the people they were trying to poll? Of course not!
I’ll give you a perfect example. I voted in the poll to support my candidate, Mike Huckabee. Do I consider myself a Values Voter? Not really. I don’t think government has a place in most social issues. How many of the online votes actually came from people who fit the criteria that the organizers were attempting to poll? There really is no way to tell.
To me, the online poll means nothing. I would have said the same thing had Huckabee won it. Again, it’s not that it isn’t a valid gauge of support, but there is no conclusive way to suggest that it represents a gauge of support from values voters. That is what the organizers, many of whom will be deciding their support based on the results of this poll, wanted. How can they take the full results seriously?
The onsite numbers however, tell a very different story. These are individuals who clearly show a dedication to their cause. There is no denying that if you took a weekend out of your life and contributed however much it cost to attend the event (not to mention hotel rooms, food, etc) that you probably have some greater respect for the values issues than the average person. These are the people the organizers were really trying to gather opinion from. Their votes speak loudly. Even better, their votes speak loudly for Mike Huckabee. He truly blew away the competition, no contest.
At the end of the day, the leaders of this event will have to ask themselves whether they were looking for generic poll results as provided by the online poll, or if they truly were seeking to gain insight into the support of values voters. For the latter to be the case, they had better focus their attention on the onsite poll alone.
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%
Talk about skewing the vote results!
There are three facts that are being left out that spins the story.
The on site voting polls were closed down after Romney’s speech and opened back up after Huckabee’s speech the next day. That means those who came to support and listen to Huckabee were able to vote on site. Those who came to listen to and support Romney the day before were not.
There were many more attendees at the event than voted on site. A lot of folks who attended voted online with their laptops and other electronic hand helds. The non-progressive folks waited in line to vote.
The organization that sent out the emails urging people to vote online was the community “Evangelicals for Mitt”. Romney’s own campaign did not do that, duh he has an 80,000 donor base, if he had solicited online votes the would have blitzed the online voting.
Good morning Christian,
First, thanks for all of your passion and efforts to supporting the Huckabee campaign. Like yourself, I know that Mike Huckabee is the right man to lead this nation come November 2008. He is of unwavering principles, sincerity and if he tells you something today, he will say the same thing a year from now. I can’t say the same thing for the other candidates. In addition, Mike is very likeable and charismatic and is able to reach out to the other side of the aisle while keeping his principles and beliefs intact.
I was so pleased to see the results of the FRC Summit yesterday. Even though he was behind Romney by 30 votes in the online voting, he still did well considering Romney had sent out a mass e-mailing getting to people to go vote for him.
Apparently Governor Huckabee did well yesterday as he owned everyone in the onsite voting. I still have not scene the video of Governor Huckabee speaking from yesterday. This should be good.
Like many others, I was disappointed by the Sunday talk shows, in particular with Fox and Friends as they flooded their coverage with Mitt Romney. Judging by their coverage you would have thought that Romney won by a landslide. When in reality he won by the skin of his teeth and that was only in the online voting which would have done nothing had it not been for the mass e-mailing.
Anyway, I have never pulled for a candidate this early in an election race. Nor have I ever donated money to ANY presidential campaign. So far, I have made 4 donations to Governor Huckabee’s campaign and plan on donating more as funds become available. I have never been so passionate about someone becoming President. Then again, no one has ever shown the conviction, sincerity, and integrity that Governor Huckabee has.
Keep fighting the good fight and continue to pray to God that the people will embrace Governor Huckabee and may he be our next POTUS.
Shawnie,
Thank you for being the first person to post an intelligent disagreeing comment in my blog. Unless there is something very inappropriate, I won’t censor comments. I enjoy a good debate. Look for my extended answer to you as my newest post. Kudos! A whole post just for you.
Thanks again,
Christian
Kevin,
Thank you much for your kind words. I do what I can.
Please let me know what you thought of the Gov’s speech at the FRC summit after you have been able to watch it. I think he gets on a nice roll and becomes very inspiring. Best still? He doesn’t have to use teleprompters to give a great speech. It comes from the heart.
Thanks for stopping by, come back any time!
~Christian
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