Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson topped the SRLC 2015 straw poll results Saturday with 25 percent attendee support.
Carson bested Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker who came in second by 5 percent and beat Texas Sen. Ted Cruz who came in third by almost 9 percent.
Below are the final numbers:
Ohio Gov. John Kasich received 0.2 percent, while former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore received 0.0 percent. Walker received the lion’s share of support from Oklahomans, while Carson received the most support from Texas and Arkansas. Carson was also the most popular with Tea Party voters.
According to SoonerPoll.com’s Bill Shapard, the straw poll results may have been affected by the absence of a candidate or potential candidate. Each Republican senator vying for the Oval Office was kept from delivering his speech at the event as a result of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster of the NSA bill Wednesday.
While Paul had no intention of attending, Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham were forced to cancel their scheduled speeches and stay in Washington to vote in the USA Freedom Act.
“Ben Carson was 40 percent of the vote after the first day, which indicates to me that his voters came with a passion to vote for him. That was well before any of the senators had a problem coming to the event. Over the course of time that amount fell from about 40 percent to 25 is where he landed,” Shapard told reporters.
He continued, “So over the course of time, other candidates spoke and their voters began to vote for them. You could always theorize that their absence or their appearance only on television had an adverse impact on their votes. Quite frankly, those like Ben Carson who were able to rally their people and get them here were the ones that did the best.”
Shapard told reporters 64 percent of SRLC attendees voted in the the straw poll. That number came out to 958 people who participated.