There does not appear to be a liberal/progressive counterpart to Patrick Ruffini’s cross-blog GOP Presidential Nominee straw poll, and hence, I have created a blog for that purpose, namely, Cross Blog Polls.
The first poll that I have posted is a Demochoice IRV poll, and the topic is one that has been seen often in the recent days, namely a straw poll for the 2008 Democratic Presidential Nominee. If you are eager go and vote, the link follows, but remember that you do not need to rank all of the 20 options listed (18 candidates and 2 non-candidate options) there. Rank at least one, but preferably 5 or more options.
Here is the link to the poll. The poll expires on October 31st at midnight.
More below the flip.
Cross-posted at MLW, myDD.
The polls that will be posted at the CBPolls site will be mostly of the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) type, as those tend to account for the evolving preferences of the participants, and also allow for postmortem analyses where one restricts the pool of candidates by criteria such as the likelihood of making a run, and the ballots are redistributed based on the ranking of the remaining candidates.
More on IRV polls can be found at this IRV Wiki page, and information specific to Demochoice’s IRV implementation and the site can be found here.
In this poll, I have included a rather large selection of candidates (plus two indeterminate options), namely:
Evan Bayh
Joe Biden
Wes Clark
Hillary Clinton
Howard Dean
John Edwards
Russ Feingold
Dick Gephardt
Al Gore
John Kerry
Dennis Kucinich
Joe Lieberman
Jack Reed
Harry Reid
Bill Richardson
Tom Vilsack
Mark Warner
Unlisted Candidate
Undisposed Voter
Write-ins: if your preferred (Democratic) nominee is still not on the list, please select the Unlisted Candidate options in the poll, and visit the poll’s blog entry here to cast a “write-in” request. Only on write-in per person please.
I will list the write-in results separately, and the popular ones will be considered for inclusion in future polls.
I will be cross-posting this poll at a variety of progressive/liberal community blogs, and will post periodic, but well-spaced, updates with running tallies.
I welcome your comments and suggestions either here, or at the CB Polls‘ webpage.
Thanks for reading the diary, and for participating in the poll.
CBP
I voted, but was terribly depressed about the lack of diversity in the group. One woman? We need to do better.
You are welcome to list some suggestions here.
Barbara Boxer!
I will include her next time.
Wow, that’s sweet. I really enjoyed the way you ran the poll. It was intriguing to find out how my vote worked.
Thanks for the work.
The credit for creating the demochoice poll software and hosting the polls goes to the Demochoice folks.
Thanks for your feedback.
Hi,
please see my comment below.
thanks
…had a ghost of a chance at winning. But she’s too far to the left on most issues – which is why, along with her fighting spirit, that I like her so much.
One factor that I felt and hence did not include Boxer this time was that she would be way too overshadowed by Hillary, IMO (but I could be wrong though).
But, I have noticed a rather strong following for her in the netroots, so that’s why, in retrospect, I should have included her anyways, especially in keeping with the inclusive nature of the poll that is made possible by IRV.
There’s a request that I’d like to make, meteor, and please feel free to turn me down: since I am currently waiting for my 7 day diary-posting hibernation period to lapse at dKos, would it be possible for you to post a link to the poll, with a brief explanation as a diary there by any chance? Only if you like the poll, and think that it is worth promoting, of course. If so, around post-lunch time (ET) may be a good time to generate as many votes as possible. If you do go ahead and post, could you please give the simple and succinct “Just Rank and Vote!” instruction next to the link, instead of my long-winded one here (as I suspect that this suppressed the turnout)?
Also, if you like to write about polls, and election/campaign analyses, I would be pleased to have you crosspost any writing by you in that area over at that CB Polls blog. Please let me know.
thanks.
Please include Boxer next round. Thanks for the great poll. Must say I was a bit surprised with the Gore lead so far.
Actually, I went ahead and added Boxer and Obama after 60 ballots had been cast. I have kept the records of the results as they stood at 60 votes, so that I can do proper accounting when the the final results are tabulated and presented.
With regards to Gore’s numbers currently, while he is a popular candidate among the netroots, the results should be more balanced than they currently are. Since the turnout has been low, such anamolies can happen. I will be posting at large turnout sites such as dKos and DU as soon as I can. Then, the results should even out.
Thanks for your feedback on the poll, and for voting. If you had cast the ballot for “Unlisted”, with Sen. Boxer in mind, please cast a write-in vote for here here, mentioning that you had already voted before she was added to the list.
Thanks.
…until it was too late.