The Occasional Observer

IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW

Everyone who works for the campaigns say these straw polls don't mean anything, but that's poppycock. The straw polls in key early primary states drive support, fund raising, an momentum. For instance, it was Romney's surprise second place showing to Frist (TN native) in the Memphis straw poll last year that made people stand up and wonder aloud if perhaps a New England Mormon could win among SoCons in the South. He'd been riding that momentum, along with solid fund raising and scores of big name endorsements, ever since.

The first big meaningful straw poll of '07 was held yesterday, and the results were surprising to say the least:

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani topped the presidential field Thursday night in a straw vote held at Spartanburg County's Republican precinct caucuses.

In Giuliani, conservative Spartanburg GOP activists gave a plurality to a candidate with a high-profile background, but only a rudimentary organization in place and a record of supporting abortion rights, gay rights and gun control.

Long-shot candidate Duncan Hunter, a U.S. House member from California running on a hard line of combating illegal immigration, was running second in preliminary totals. Hunter, running a shoestring campaign, had part of his modest staff working Spartanburg for the past week.

With votes in from about 71 of 75 precincts, Giuliani had 26.1 percent of the 470 votes and Hunter had 23.4 percent.

Arizona Sen. John McCain was third at 18.3 percent and Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback was fourth with 14.4 percent. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who had spent the most time cultivating Spartanburg Republicans, was fifth at 12.5 percent.

A 5th place finish has to be extremely disappointing for Mitt given all the time he's spent in SC, and the endorsement of SC's true conservative Senator, Jim DeMint.

Giuliani's performance is not all that surprising, although much worse than some of the national poll numbers that have been popping up recently. It's also telling that Giuliani received 26.1% of the votes, and the remaining 73.9% of the votes went to pro-life candidates. Rudy still has a hill to climb, especially once the field narrows and it's only one or two SoCons running against him.

Duncan Hunter's numbers are stunning. He beat Romney, and established SoCon Brownback as well. It will be very interesting to see where this leads him, and if he's able to leverage it into dollars. That will require some campaign savvy. There is no GOP candidate who is more right on more issues than Rep. Hunter, but viability has been considered his problem. That problem may be diminishing now.

UPDATE:

It seems that the remaining handful of precincts that hadn't been counted when I wrote the article have drastically altered the outcome. The Greenville News reports that McCain came from way behind to win the poll by 2 votes over Giuliani, and Hunter was 4 votes behind Rudy. It was practically a 3-way tie, with Brownback and Romney forming a second tier getting about half the votes of the leaders.

Rudy supporters, who had already been crowing about their victory, are a little suspicious of McCain's high level of support (80%) among the few ballots that were outstanding after the first night of counting.