Probably NOT much but Hot Air which each campaign will try to spin to their advantage.

You might have seen some buzz on Twitter or in your e-mail inbox about Senate wannabee Chuck DeVore and GOP guv-hopeful Steve Poizner crushing respective rivals Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman in the state party convention straw poll.

But as CNN’s Peter Hamby points out: “One problem: There was no official straw poll at the California Republican Party Convention.”

“We did not conduct a straw poll at this convention whatsoever,” California GOP chairman Ron Nehring said in an e-mail.

So who did? An aide to DeVore — a state Assemblyman who has actively courted the party’s conservative wing as he prepares to battle Fiorina for the Republican Senate nomination — acknowledged that Sunday’s poll was engineered by the DeVore campaign, even though it was described as a “CRP straw poll” in an e-mail to supporters.

“It was not connected to the party,” said DeVore spokesman Joshua Trevino. “We printed up the ballots, and they were distributed on Saturday night.”

Jon Fleischman, blogger and Vice Chairman, South of the California Republican Party weighed into the fray yesterday.

The reality, having observed the process is that this “straw poll” was nothing more than an orchestrated campaign event by the DeVore campaign to garner some earned media.  Good for them.  I’m all for creative thinking.

The questionable part of the process was in releasing the “results” in a way that made it non-obvious to the reader that this entire straw poll was conceived, executed, counted and released by the DeVore for Senate campaign.

This severely impeaches the credibility of the results because of the obvious conflict of interest that exists.

The Carly Fiorina United States Senate exploratory campaign had this response:

Fiorina spokeswoman Beth Miller was even more dismissive.

“Let me get this straight, you want me to comment on a Chuck DeVore straw poll that was conducted in the DeVore hospitality suite on Saturday night with a bunch of college Republicans and a lot of free beer flowing?,” Miller asked.

So, the long and short of this flap is that this DeVore vs. Fiorina California GOP Straw poll was not an officially sanctioned poll, not scientific in its methodology and the Chuck DeVore campaign unsuccessfully tried to ascribe some meaning to its results.

Sounds like no harm, no foul to me.

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