CPAC straw poll--split again?

[Steve Cobb]

The CPAC straw poll uses choose-one plurality voting, right?

One sees articles mocking its irrelevance:

http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/cpac-straw-poll-winner-president/2015/02/27/id/627243/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/03/01/the-past-nine-cpac-straw-polls-in-one-graph/

but nothing mentioning the fundamental flaw. What a great opportunity for CES...

We should make a calendar of famous elections, and issue press releases immediately after each one.

[Steve Cobb]

Here is a photo of the ballot:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2973747/Rand-Paul-comes-ahead-CPAC-straw-poll-picking-2016-momentum-red-meat-right-wingers.html

[Warren D Smith]

while I agree the use of plurality is kind of absurd if there are this
many candidates (17+other+dunno), it is justified in the sense that
(i) the actual GOP primary that it is "predicting" uses plurality
(ii) the results seemed to be very skewed perhaps indicating (?)
vote-splitting was not a big problem in this poll (?):

2015 CPAC STRAW POLL RESULTS

25.7% Sen. Rand Paul
21.4% Gov. Scott Walker
11.5% Sen. Ted Cruz
11.4% Dr. Ben Carson
8.3% Former Gov. Jeb Bush
4.3% Former Sen. Rick Santorum
3.7% Sen. Marco Rubio
3.5% Donald Trump
3.0% Carly Fiorina
2.8% Gov. Chris Christie
1.1% Former Gov. Rick Perry
0.9% Gov. Bobby Jindal
0.8% Former Gov. Sarah Palin
0.3% Former Gov. Mike Huckabee
0.3% Former Ambassador John Bolton
0.1% Sen. Lindsey Graham
0.1% Former Gov. George Pataki
1.0% Undecided
0.7% Other



--
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)

[Steve Cobb]

The GOP has two passionate factions: libertarians and religious conservatives. The former generally has only one candidate (with the surname of Paul), the latter might have a couple, while the rest have broader appeal (with less passion) or narrower appeal (with even less support). As the cats and dogs are successively eliminated (rather like IRV), it is eventually the establishment candidate who picks up their support, with the libertarian last to concede. The wrongly eliminated candidates are the innocuous compromises, like Pawlenty and Huntsman in 2012. When the New Hampshire GOP did its usual flawed straw poll at its annual meeting in 2011, some of us ran an approval poll along side it, and Pawlenty won. Unfortunately, without obvious first-choice support, Pawlenty withdrew early, and Huntsman became the next moderate to be ignored.

[Warren D Smith]

I would urge you WELL AHEAD OF TIME contact the organizers of some
of these straw polls, such as the "Iowa straw poll" and convince them
to switch it to
range voting. If you can, that will have a big beneficial impact.
If the "two frontrunners" in the plurality real election are selected
by a good voting system, that will be far better or the USA and world,
than if they are selected by crap.
Also, it will benefit that straw poll itself because they will garner
good publicity as reformers
and innovators, ahead of the curve, leading democracy rather than
being part of the problem. This publicity in turn will help the CES.

[Warren D Smith]

To many of the teens and twenty-somethings I spoke with, Walker was
the answer. "Personally, I like Rick Santorum," said Nicole, a college
sophomore. "But he's not going to get elected, so I'm supporting Scott
Walker."

--a quote from a news story on CPAC. So evidently strategic voting was
happening.

[Clay Shentrup]

On Monday, March 2, 2015 at 8:23:32 AM UTC-8, Warren D. Smith (CRV cofounder, http://RangeVoting.org) wrote:

I would urge you WELL AHEAD OF TIME contact the organizers of some
of these straw polls, such as the "Iowa straw poll" and convince them
to switch it to range voting.

No way that's going to happen. 

[Warren D Smith]

why not?

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