Rand Paul won the 2015 CPAC Presidential Straw Poll with
Paul came in first with 25.7%, while Scott Walker came in second with 21.4% of the vote, and Ted Cruz came in third with 11.5% of the vote, just edging out Dr. Ben Carson at 11.4%. (Carson is 2016’s Herman Cain: The attractive outsider with no real chance of winning. The presidency is not an entry level job…)
Complete results via the magic of Twitter:
BREAKING: Rand Paul wins the #CPACStrawPoll.
Walker, Cruz, Carson, and Bush round out the top 5.
#CPAC #CPAC2015 pic.twitter.com/xR0ZSxl9II
— Justin Gibson (@JGibsonDem) February 28, 2015
Does this mean Rand Paul is the GOP front runner? Not really, since that total is down four points from his father Ron Paul’s showing in 2011. Ron Paul would go on to pick up a smattering of delegates and place first in the U.S. Virgin islands primaries, which did not catapult him to the nomination. Mitt Romney placed second in the CPAC poll before going on to win the nomination.
Now, I happen to believe that Rand Paul is a much more viable GOP candidate than Ron Paul was (though not as viable as Scott Walker or Ted Cruz), but the Rand Paul’s CPAC win shows no sign of him breaking out of Ron Paul’s ideological base, which is not enough for him to win more than (at most) three or four primaries.
Based on polls in Iowa and elsewhere, Scott Walker should probably be considered the font-runner, and the CPAC result doesn’t change that.