As I mentioned on Saturday, I recently attended a gathering here in Northern Virginia that served as a thank you for people who had volunteered for Democratic candidates during the 2007 elections. In addition to the presence of several electeds and current candidates and the company of fellow Democrats, one of the draws for the event was the fact that there was a presidential straw poll. With a crowd of over 400, the percentage of the vote received by each of the candidates goes as follows:
Clinton 35
Obama 24
Edwards 18
Richardson 10
Biden 7
Kucinich 3
Dodd 2
Gravel
This poll seems to fall in line with the order of candidates that most national polls report and I therefore wasn’t too surprised by the results. At the same time, however, I don’t think Hillary’s lead would be that large when translated to the general public. The main reason I argue this is because the crowd was made up largely of “political insiders” — not that that’s a bad thing — who tend to fall into the category of supporting Hillary. Furthermore, many of the people at the event had made it perfectly clear for quite some time now that they support her candidacy. In my opinion, it would have therefore been newsworthy if Clinton hadn’t won the straw poll.
Even though Clinton did win by an 11 point margin, it should be worth noting that many younger Democratic activists arrived after the ballot box was closed. Several people who feel into this category have been extremely active supporters of either Edwards or Obama. With the arrival of these supporters after the vote ended, the straw poll definitely did not represent the number of supporters for these candidates that were present at the event. The numbers for Obama and Edwards were further lowered due to the fact that many of their supporters had driven down to the 1st Congressional District to volunteer for Forgit who had a special election just three days after the event. Finally, these two candidates have campaigns that are attractive to people who want change and aren’t necessarily part of the “political insiders” crowd that this event attracted. In other words, Obama and Edwards should not be dismayed by these results at all because the event didn’t necessarily attract their base group of supporters.
Filed under: Virginia Politics
