It looks like the conservative base does, in fact, “Stand with Rand.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is following in his father’s footsteps, winning this year’s Conservative Political Action Committee straw poll on Saturday.
Paul won 25 percent of the vote with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio coming not far behind, with 23 percent of the vote. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum took the third spot with 8 percent of the vote, closely followed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie with 7 percent and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan with 6 percent.
Paul’s father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), won the poll in both 2010 and 2011. Last year, then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney unsurprisingly took the top spot. This year’s results are also hardly shocking considering the number of CPAC attendees rocking “Stand with Rand” t-shirts throughout the conference.
The Kentucky Senator has been praised throughout CPAC by speaker after speaker for last week’s 13-hour filibuster on the constitutionality of Obama’s drone policy.
During his own CPAC speech, Paul brought along stacks of binders and joked, “I was told I got 10 measly minutes but just in case, I brought 13 hours worth of information.”
The straw poll has been a CPAC tradition since 1976, when it announced Ronald Reagan as its first winner. Paul tweeted about what an honor it was to win the award that had been given to Reagan.
It’s humbling to win the #CPAC2013 straw poll, an honor bestowed on Reagan. I will continue to stand up for conservative values as he did.
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) March 16, 2013
Almost 3,000 people voted in this year’s poll, which is down slightly from years past. But the good news is that the majority of voters were actually young people this year. Fifty-two percent of voters were between the age of 18 to 25.
Below is the full list of this year’s 23 candidates, in alphabetical order. Former presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were among the other 44 people written in this year, the largest group of write-ins in the poll’s history.
1. New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte
2. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer
3. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback
4. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson
5. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
6. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz
7. Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels
8. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley
9. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal
10. Ohio Gov. John Kasich
11. New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez
12. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell
13. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin
14. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul
15. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence
16. Texas Gov. Rick Perry
17. Ohio Sen. Rob Portman
18. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio
19. Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan
20. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum
21. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott
22. South Dakota Sen. John Thune
23. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVgL5bVcFl4&w=560&h=315]
