Ron Paul Impressive in Iowa Straw Poll

How does a candidate with little name recognition outside of the internet, virtually no organization in Iowa and having spent very little money or time there end up with almost 10% of the vote in the straw campaign?

Hmmm... could it be liberty and the Constitution?

Check out the predicted results by the Iowa GOP compared with the actual results:

Prediction:




Actual Results:

11th place: John Cox (41 votes)
10th place: John McCain (101 votes)
9th place: Duncan Hunter
8th place: Rudy Giuliani
7th place: Fred Thompson
6th place: Tommy Thompson (1039 votes)
5th place: Ron Paul (1305 votes, 9.1%)
4th place: Tom Tancredo (1961 votes, 13.7%)
3rd place: Sam Brownback (2192 votes)
2nd place: Mike Huckabee (2587 votes)
1st place: Mitt Romney (4516)

5th place and 9.1% of the vote instead of last place and 0% of the vote. Such exceeding of expectations would logically be considered positive news for a campaign that has struggled with name recognition.

However, ABC "News" thinks otherwise: "Paul challenged his supporters to show that his campaign is more than just online support and urged them to convert that support into actual votes. Rep. Paul's fifth-place showing demonstrated his supporters were unable to meet that challenge."

So, the "scientific polling" which has showed Paul at 0-2% means that his supporters are just online. Apparently, garnering almost one tenth of the vote in a straw poll with little campaigning or name recognition also means that his supporters are "just online".

What a joke.