@ Chronic: Straw Pollsters

In the interminable crawl to next year's presidential elections, the tiniest of events can become fascinating, even if it's just to break the tedium. And there are few events tinier than nonbinding straw polls, which Texas Dems and Republicans have both conducted.

The Republicans had their "pay to vote" straw poll in Houston on Sept. 1, which handed California Rep. Duncan Hunter what may be his only victory of the campaign. Meanwhile, on Monday morning, the Democrats announced the results of their wholly unbinding, unscientific, and fairly worthless ePrimary, an online exercise in wild surveys. The winner was not as wildly unexpected as in the GOP poll: John Edwards, often regarded as the Dem dark horse, won with 38%.

The Dems – and especially the Edwards camp – played it smart; the winner's wife, Elizabeth Edwards, turned up for the photo op. So, instead of the photo festivities being a "remember folks, this is just for fun" event, they became a stump-speech occasion for which all of the Austin-based print and broadcast media turned up (and then scratched their heads over how they would turn it into a news item). By turning the event into a bragging-rights affair, Edwards may have made the Texas straw poll more useful in the Dems' race for the White House than the actual primary will be.

Posted Mon., Sept. 10, at austinchronicle.com/chronic.