BREAKING: Ron Paul wins CPAC presidential straw poll

Sat, 02/20/2010 - 6:58pm | posted by Jason Pye

That is the word from Politico. According to several sources, the results were met with boos from attendees of CPAC, which again shows that conservatives are still not welcoming to libertarians despite what Ronald Reagan said about the correlation between the two philosophies (“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism”).

In case you’re wondering, Mitt Romney won each of the last three CPAC straw polls (2007, 2008 and 2009).

Here are the full results:

Ron Paul: 31%
Mitt Romney: 22%
Sarah Palin: 7%
Tim Pawlenty: 6%
Mike Pence: 5%
Newt Gingrich: 4%
Mike Huckabee: 4%
Mitch Daniels: 2%
Rick Santorum: 2%
John Thune: 2%
Haley Barbour: 1%
Other: 5%
Undecided: 6%

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Tagged: CPAC GOP straw poll Haley Barbour John Thune Mike Huckabee Mike Pence Mitch Daniels Mitt Romney Newt Gingrich Ronald Reagan Tim pawlenty

Looking at that list of candidates and the results it is easy to see that the non-libertarians split their votes and while the libertarians went for Ron Paul. If they had used a more sane voting method like Approval Voting then the results would have been more in line with the actual preferences of the CPAC voters. Maybe conservatives should add “moving to a better voting system” as a part of their core agenda.