I'm curious...give me your opinions...what do you all think of straw polls? How effective are they in predicting who will be a presidential nominee and who won't be? Are straw polls easily manipulated?

Since elections are so easily manipulated, I guess straw polls must be too. Well, maybe not as easily as elections?

The Iowa Republican straw poll was an indicator in some ways, but was way off in others. It showed that Mitt Romney cannot buy his way into the White House. And, even though it did predict surprising strength for Huckabible in Iowa, Sam Brownback finished third.

Straw poll: Huckabee spent just $58 per vote for 2nd place and revived prospects
The top three finishers in the Iowa Republican Party straw poll are on talk shows today. We'll be back later with a report on what they said. Meanwhile, here's our own cost-benefit analysis of how they did yesterday at the Ames event:

• Third-place finisher Sam Brownback says he spent about $325,000 to win his 2,192 votes. That's $148.27 for each vote.
• Second-place finisher Mike Huckabee spent about $150,000 and received 2,587 votes. That's $57.98 per vote.
• Winner Mitt Romney has not said how much he spent. The reporting in this Washington Post article suggests at least $2 million and possibly more than twice that much. Assuming $2 million for 4,516 votes, that's $442.87 per vote. But it could top $1,000.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/20 ... -fall.html

Is there any way we could have them send that money directly to us rather than spending it on advertising that drives us up the wall?

The race for power is ing.

Could we take a straw poll on how many people are turned off by the process of elections in this country?