General News With Candidates Staying Out, Iowa Straw Poll Dies

BradThePug · Jun 12, 2015

The Iowa Straw Poll, a Republican Party tradition since 1979 that was cherished by candidates vying to win the nation’s first nominating contest, is dead for the 2016 presidential cycle, party officials said Friday.

The move was made as candidates in one of the largest presidential fields in modern Republican history showed diminishing interest in participating in the August event, in which campaigns would spend lavishly to court local Republicans to emerge supreme in a poll at the carnival-like gathering.

“I’ve said since December that we would only hold a straw poll if the candidates wanted one, and this year that is just not the case,” Jeff Kaufmann, the Republican Party chairman in Iowa, said in a statement emailed shortly after a special meeting of the party’s state central committee.

The termination of the straw poll reflects a trend in Republican campaigning that began in the 2012 presidential cycle toward a contest waged increasingly on the stages of debates and in the confines of Fox News studios. The straw poll’s significance was diminished during that campaign cycle when its winner, Michele Bachmann, finished at the bottom of the pack in the caucuses, and its cancellation in 2015 suggests a nationalized nominating battle may have finally arrived as candidates focus less on early contest states.
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General News With Candidates Staying Out, Iowa Straw Poll Dies

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