Let’s just get it out of the way and all recite the mantra at once, shall we?

Straw polls don’t mean anything.

But for those who still like to follow them, we had yet another this weekend in Minnesota at the Midwestern Leadership Conference. And once again Herman Cain mopped up the competition, this time registering the largest margin of victory yet, bringing home more than half the votes.

Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain rounded out a very good week with a straw poll victory at the Midwest Leadership Conference in Minnesota on Saturday.

Cain pulled off a decisive win, garnering 52.6 percent of the vote and beating Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann in her own backyard. Bachmann took a distant second place with 12.2 percent of the vote, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 11.1 percent. Texas Rep. Ron Paul attracted 10.7 percent of the vote while Texas Gov. Rick Perry got just 4 percent.

Cain’s numbers are stunning to be sure, but what is probably the saddest footnote of this event is the fact that Bachmann barely broke out of single digits in her own home state. That campaign may not be officially dead, but they’ve got a priest on standby with a copy of the last rites.

Also, following the Values Voter Summit, this is two back-to-back outings where Rick Perry – who was briefly the newly crowned king of the pack – sank below the background noise level. (Though sitting on $15M in donations can salve a lot of wounds.) Mitt didn’t do much better than that, though he at least managed to edge out Ron Paul for once.

There will be singing and dancing in Cain-Town this week to be sure. No matter what you think of straw polls, headlines which include words like “winning” are always good news for a candidate seeking to expand their name recognition and drive donors to pry open their wallets. Cain has been racking up one impressive showing after another lately, and talk about Herminator Momentum is getting harder and harder to treat like a joke.