Despite the fact that she hasn't declared yet, Sarah Palin has not only won Ace's Straw Poll, but she did so quite handily, at 34.88% of the vote coming in over ten points ahead of her closest competitor, Herman Cain, who polled a respectable 26.08%. In third place was former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, with 23.5%.
Everyone else was left in the dust, including Mitt Romney, who polled a mere 4.56%, coming in fifth behind Minnesota House of Representatives Member Michelle Bachman with 6.29% in fourth place.
In sixth place, curiously enough, was former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson at 2%, polling ahead of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum at 1.5%.
Coming in with less than one percent of the total was former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman and, coming in dead last-Newt Gingrich, who might as well have hung it up before he ever got around to shooting himself in the foot while simultaneously cramming it in his mouth.
Now admittedly this is not a scientific poll, but I think its pretty accurate for a number of reasons. For one thing, Ace has a wide readership among conservatives and Republicans, and his site is in fact probably a bell-weather insofar as current Republican divisions and sentiment goes.
The second thing that makes this poll likely a credible reflection of GOP voter mood is that, although you can vote as often as you want in the poll, only the first vote is included in the final results.
Finally, the most fun part of the poll is the fact that the Paul-bots were excluded from skewing the results of this poll, as they have been so wont to do in so many others, in favor of their Messiah, Texas House of Representatives member Ron Paul.
Despair not, however, as if Paul was included and his numbers were an accurate reflection of his actual support, he would not move the numbers beyond what might well be classified (if this were a scientific poll) as the poll's margin of error.
And its always fun to make the Paul-bots fume and wack out, just for the comic relief, which is something we can all sometimes use.
In the meantime, since its starting to look more likely that Palin is getting ready to run, one can only wonder how her number will look when she does declare.
