What to Make of the Straw Poll

The Southern Republican Leadership Conference held their Straw Poll for the 2008 Presidential Nomination in Memphis tonight, and its hard to figure out what to make of the results.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist won the Straw Poll with 36.9 of the vote. However, 85% of Frist voters were from his home state, part of an organized campaign by the Frist team. Seeing how 52% of the Straw Poll voters were from Tennessee, he wasn't even the first choice of a significant chunk of Tennessee voters.

Senator John McCain made a strange pronouncement that his supporters write-in the name of President Bush on the straw poll ballot. So were all of the voters who wrote in the President's name McCain supporters, or was this a ploy to claim more McCain supporters? If all of those Bush voters had voted for McCain, McCain would have finished second.

And speaking of people who finish second, how in the world did Governor Mitt Romney do so well, particularly with staff shakeups and a report that he is returning to Michigan after his term is up. Is the "Yankee Leader, Southern Values" working?

What does it all mean? Not much. Then-Governor Bush won the 1998 straw poll, but Steve Forbes finished second, Dan Quayle third, and Fred Thompson fourth. We still have a long way to go to get to our own Maryland primaries in 2006, much less the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary in 2008.