Longtime Hot Air readers may recall that the first “winner” we ever had in these surveys was Chris Christie. Four years ago he earned 29% of the vote, but my, how things change. Christie now has 1% of the vote and sits well behind everyone except Mike Huckabee, who he ties, Rick Santorum, and Joe Scarborough, who out of over 3000 votes received a grand total of 6.
Your current leader? Ted Cruz, who earned 29% of the vote. The top five is rounded out by Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.
As to issue testing, the candidates offered as “announcing” policy positions didn’t really make too much of a difference to how people voted, but what the issues were did. Supporting marijuana legalization, for instance, had a surprisingly negative impact on Ted Cruz; when he “supported” it, he came within just 10 votes of being overtaken by Scott Walker.
When Chris Christie declared his “support” for marijuana legalization, he gained about a dozen supporters, but I would chalk that net change up to the fact that Christie could hardly lose many supporters. It seems in the current Hot Air voting pool that pot legalization is not exactly a winning issue.
Medicaid block granting doesn’t appear to be a motivating issue for readers, but the calling of a Constitutional convention is. Mike Huckabee tripled his vote total when he “supported” it.
Rick Perry also gained votes, nearly tripling his take from 262 to 660 — drawing lots of votes from the top two contenders — and jumping into second place.
Even Joe Scarborough picked up some votes when he “supported” a Constitutional convention.
Anyway, the survey’s demographics are below and are pretty consistent with our past surveys. Next time I’ll ask about second choices, which I think will shed some light on the contours of the race right now.
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