Ron Paul; Straw Poll; The Caucus

The Caucus blog at NYTimes.com has yet to issue a clarification to the post I referenced earlier, which unclearly identified the sponsor of a straw poll that Ron Paul won on Tuesday, November 6.

Reporter Katherine Seelye wrote:

Ron Paul Wins! That’s the headline today after the first New York State Republican Straw Poll. Clearly, after raking in a record amount of money the other day, Mr. Paul is on a roll. He seems to have out-organized his fellow Republicans — on Rudy Giuliani’s home turf.

The New York State straw poll was conducted Tuesday at the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York City.

The results: Mr. Paul, 26 votes; Mr. Giuliani, 21; Mitt Romney, 6; John McCain, 4; Mike Huckabee, 2; Duncan Hunter, 1; Tom Tancredo, 0.

It is not clear why no votes were measured for Fred Thompson.

As I noted in a clarification to my earlier post, it was not the New York Republican State Committee that sponsored the straw poll, but the New York Young Republican Club. The clarification came via a commenter identifying herself as Jen Saunders, who is a contributor to the NYYRC's blog.

To be clear, the NYYRC, in a post on November 6, referenced the event as "The first New York State Straw Poll." However, Seelye referred to it as the New York State Republican straw poll. She made no reference to the sponsoring organization, which would have made it clear that the event was not affiliated with New York State's official Republican Party apparatus.

Rereading the post from The Caucus, it becomes apparent just how sloppy Ms. Seelye's writing was in this instance. She wonders out loud why no votes were measured for Fred Thompson in the straw poll. However, at the NYYRC's blog, which is the only place I have found that they published the results online, the tally is recorded as follows:

Ron Paul 26; Rudy 21; Romney 6; McCain 4; Huckabee 2; Hunter 1; Thompson 1; Cox 0; Keyes 0; Tancredo 0

Not only does Seelye miss the one vote received by Fred Thompson, but she leaves out the participation of Alan Keyes and someone identified only as "Cox."

One wonders what Seelye's source was for her post.