Eagle River Republicans’ booth offered a straw poll during the Bear Paw Festival July 12-16. The poll was open to all. Participants self-selected, and were handed a ballot with potential gubernatorial candidates. They were allowed to vote for one.
The results:
The most interesting part of the process, said District 12 Chairman Ron Johnson, was to discover how many people had not heard of anyone on the list.
Johnson surmised that Dan Sullivan, former Anchorage mayor, came out on top because of his popularity as a mayor. Sulliavan isn’t running for governor, but has told people that he is running for Anchorage mayor in 2018, after having had a three-year break from the job. He had not filed as of Tuesday morning.
Joe Miller, who was second most popular on the straw poll, has also not announced he is running. In fact the only person who is certain as a candidate is Mike Dunleavy, who came in fifth, behind Mark Begich.
Straw polls are unscientific, of course. They are conducted with different methods and are useful only as a general gauge of those who self-selected to participate in the poll.
