Iowa GOP to reveal straw poll’s future

Iowa Republicans will announce the fate of their party’s famous straw poll on Friday, The Des Moines Register is reporting.

{mosads}The Iowa GOP’s governing board will reveal the controversial event’s future during a conference call that morning, according to the newspaper.

The Iowa GOP initially voted 16-0 to proceed with the straw poll, a big moneymaker for the state party, last January, despite criticism that the cost of full participation for candidates has been prohibitive and the results have tended to push forward long shots with no real chance of winning the GOP nomination.

Several likely GOP presidential candidates have said they will not spend money attempting to win the straw poll, scheduled for Aug. 8.

Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and former Govs. Jeb Bush (Fla.) and Mike Huckabee (Ark.) have all decided they will not spend funds competing for straw poll voters this election cycle.

Gov. Scott Walker (Wis.), meanwhile, has stayed mum on his spending intentions despite his place as Iowa polling’s front-runner. The likely 2016 candidate has appeared noncommittal, however, by not sending aides to meetings over the event, The Des Moines Register said.

A late May Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa poll found that 51 percent of likely GOP caucus participants there believed the poll is useful.

Another 47 percent, it discovered, felt the survey had overstayed its welcome.

Gov. Terry Branstad (R-Iowa) famously declared during the 2012 presidential election that the straw poll had “outlived its usefulness.”

It suffered a public misstep that election when a final count overturned its results.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) ended up besting former Gov. Mitt Romney (Mass.) in that edition.

Romney would end up winning the GOP’s nomination but losing to President Obama in the final election.