Iowa straw poll aftermath
In the end, Bachmann won the 2011 Ames Straw Poll, a political carnival on the campus of Iowa State University that has become a media-swarmed early test of presidential candidates' strength.
Bachmann barely edged out Ron Paul, with everybody else looking fairly sad.
http://abcnews.go.co...story?id=14301957
What I find most interesting about the reporting on this is the degree to which news articles are ignoring Ron Paul's second place finish. Bachmann beat Paul by only 1% point, but many articles are like this ABC news one, saying Bachmann won and then skipping to the other campaign news without mentioning Paul at all.
Pawlenty has dropped out after coming in 3rd. His campaign has just gotten little national traction and he needed a decent showing here to garner some national attention. Though it actually seems a little premature if he was really invested in running, it's only a preliminary poll in one state after all. It's easy for a small but dedicated group to flood the Iowa Straw poll and make their candidate look good, which probably inflated the votes of the top two here.
Rick Perry just formally announced Saturday, so he didn't have any organization or push in Iowa. He managed a 6th place finish on write in votes, which is pretty good considering. Mit Rommney only managed 7th, which looks bad for him but he could get back into it easily if the hard right ends up fighting each other.
Jay