I noticed that gopstrawpolls.com has dropped Ron Paul from the list of options and this has caused some outcry by Ron Paul supporters who feel the move is blatantly undemocratic. From their explanation:
My reason for excluding him was simple, there had been numerous reports of Paul supporters cheating on online straw polls, and I'm not one for tolerating such behavior. However, the May straw poll was unique in that it was launched after two primary debates which included Paul, and I felt that it was time to put him in and perhaps I even entertained the notion that after getting caught so many times that Paul's supporters would have cleaned up there act.
This turned out not to be the case.
There have been several blog posts written by others that go into some detail about the Paul Machine going to work on the latest straw poll. William Beutler over at BlogPI has a few posts on the subject, (Inside the Ron Paul Machine I: Slow But Steady Wins the Race?, Inside the Ron Paul Machine II: On the Assembly Line and Accept No Substitutes) and John Hawkins at Right Wing News has some insight as well.)
With a paranoia that only competes with that of the loony left, the Paul Machine quickly expressed frustration at Paul's initial poor showing of 4%+/- in the poll, charging that the poll was rigged. Some comforted themselves by writing off online polls as unscientific (which of course they are) and meaningless. Despite this initial attempt to comfort themselves, they brought their army together and slowly but surely inched Paul up the poll.
I'm all for giving credit where credit is due, and certainly the Paul Machine is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to organizing online, unfortunately, for people who claim that Paul is undoubtedly what this country needs, they've devoted their time, effort, and energy to artificially creating the appearance of mass support, instead of really trying to reach out to uncommitted primary voters and convince them to support Paul in a reasonable, civilized way.
...
Adding to the sinister nature of Paul's supporters efforts was the deliberate (and somewhat sophisticated) means by which they attempted to camouflage their efforts -- which we are well aware of. But in the end, what good are phony results? Isn't it more valuable to see what the true temperature of the American people or the conservative blogosphere is? Wouldn't Paul supporters rather know a more accurate reflection of Paul's support and use the data from the straw poll to assess how best to increase that support?
Granted they seem to fail to lay out specific ways Paul Supporters are supposedly cheating the system to skew on-line poll results, but given the nature of their polling website I can see how that would be absolutely against their best interests (let's show people how to cheat on our polls so we have this problem with everybody!). Problem is that without proof it isn't very convincing to Paul supporters. To others it isn't far fetched all considering that he polls in the <1% to 3% range on actual scientific polls and off the charts on on-line polls. The arguments that Paul supporters alone are almost entirely landline-less people based on anecdotals is pretty unconvincing as well. We'd have to believe that in spite of some huge ground swell of support for Paul that hardly any of his supporters have any money to donate to his campaign. Also unrealistic. Ron Paul is attempting to appeal to the most die hard paleo-conservative segment of society... a segment that rarely has any significant support from the electorate. As a third party philosophy it rarely even beats other third parties in spite having one of the strongest third party structures behind it (the LP). As someone who is regularly accused of being a traitor, a communist, a radical leftist, a neo-con, a fascist, etc etc deserving of everything from deportation to execution for not agreeing with their interpretation of the Constitution, I can't say I really want to help Ron Paul supporters get their candidate of choice. Given the skewed results of the internet polling versus scientific polling and the demeanor of many Paul supporters I honestly can't bring myself to oppose this move by gopstrawpolls.com. Perhaps if Ron Paul supporters want more acceptance by the Republican party and its members they should rein in their most outlandish supporters' behavior so that the people they are trying to appeal to aren't constantly hearing how they are treasonous filth that needs a bullet or a one way ticket to some authoritarian nation. Those kind of tactics don't help build support. They solidify opposition. 
In reality the skewed internet polling isn't helping Paul out at all in actual scientific polling and is not looking to help him gain any headway in the actual primary as he tends to max out around 3% on both first and second choice scientific polling. Paul can't even get the full support of that roughly 46-47% of Americans who absolutely swear they will not vote for Hillary Clinton when given just those two choices in match up polling. Paul's support in cyberspace has yet to materialize in the real world in any way shape or form. The desperate attempts by his supporters to equate the two is based on absolutely zero evidence.
In reality the Democrats have the best odds of winning against Paul than the GOP front runners.
Perhaps they'll prove us all wrong at the primary polls, but they have yet to provide any evidence that they even have a remote chance of doing so.
Month after month Paul has been polling towards the bottom and the latest polling hasn't shown any change:
For the seven days ending August 26, 2007, Rudy Giuliani earns 24% of the vote. Fred Thompson is second at 23% followed by Mitt Romney at 13%. John McCain now earns 12% support followed by Mike Huckabee at 5%. Four other candidate split 4% of the vote while 18% are undecided.
Those other four candidates, mentioned by name in the polling question, are Sam Brownback, Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter, and Tom Tancredo (review history of weekly results).
There is no well-hidden and unreachable segment of the electorate hiding in bunkers with internet connections just waiting to vote for Paul. Just a bunch of people on the internet who really wish that was the case in order to pretend their fossilized political philosophies are actually real-live dinosaurs that can walk the earth again. I see a movie deal in the making: "Jurassic Paul."
