This is going to be all over the web in, oh, 30 seconds or so, so I figured I’d announce it here at Mere-O as well.
The top four issues that voters said was important to them:
1) Life
2) Marriage
3) Tax cuts
4) Permanent tax relief for families.
Top four candidates in the straw poll results:
4) Fred Thompson 564
3) Ron Paul 865
2) Mike Huckabee 1565
1) Mitt Romney 1595
How many votes came from online and how many were live? There is NO WAY Romney got that many votes from the people here. Nor did Ron Paul. What this means is that for those who came to conference, Huck was the clear winner. That’s the only takeaway value from the poll, but FRC is going to have a conference where they clarify the results.
Was “terrorism” not one of the options? I’m surprised it wasn’t in the Top 4 especially considering Tony Perkins cited both “national defense” and “foreign policy” in his introduction. Or was it the top four domestic issues?
[…] While Huckabee lost the straw poll, he won the on-site voting 5/1. There were 488 people who voted for Huckabee at the conference (as opposed to online) while 99 voted for Romney. […]
Nobody,
Nothing like “terrorism” or “the war” was on the list (181 people voted for ‘other’, which probably means the war. I don’t know what to make of that myself. This was the question: “Please indicate which issue is the most important in determining your opinion of the candidate that you will most likely vote for.” Apparently, someone didn’t get Perkins’ memo that “values voters” includes national defense.