Ron Paul beats out Romney, Huntsman in recent poll

SALT LAKE CITY -- With so much attention given to former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, little has been said about a candidate that continues to perform well in several of the nation's conservative polls.

Congressman Ron Paul recently won the Republican Leadership Conference straw poll, collecting 612 votes (39 percent), with his closest competitor Jon Huntsman Jr. obtaining 382 votes (25 percent) of the 1542 votes cast.

Republican front-runner Mitt Romney only received 74 votes (4 percent) after winning the same straw poll a year before, beating out Paul by a single vote. However, Romney announced earlier in the month that he would be foregoing the conference to focus on other aspects of his campaign.

But this was not the first time Rep. Paul has secured the top spot in a national poll. In February, Paul won the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll with 30 percent of the votes, which is a poll he won the year prior.

In previous years, Romney has been the chosen favorite, beating out Rudy Giuliani (2007), John McCain (2008) and Bobby Jindal (2009). But in the last two years, Romney has been unsuccessful, finishing behind Paul in 2010 and 2011.

By a look at the numbers, it appears Romney has lost his touch with the American electorate as Paul is surging to an eventual Republican nomination; however, numbers can be a bit deceiving on the surface, particularly in straw poll voting.

In 2008, John McCain won the GOP nomination, but did not attend the conference and finished fifth in the polling. Additionally, Romney won that year's CPAC straw poll even after he dropped out of the presidential race.

Although Paul does reasonably well in straw poll voting, he fails to translate that success into actual voting in the primaries or in the general presidential election. Additionally, many of the leading scientific public opinion polls give Paul little chance against a candidate like Romney or former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who hasn't announced her presidential campaign intentions.

So why does the 75-year-old Congressman from Texas struggle to make the transition from straw poll voting to actual votes on election day?

To start, Paul has a tremendous young following that is mobile and willing to live up to the grassroots name; however, on election day, their vote counts just the same as everyone else -- one. And unfortunately for Paul, there just isn't enough national support to push him over the edge on election day.

Paul supporters are great organizers -- particularly on the Internet -- and have likely planned out a series of events until the primary season begins. But for many voters around the country, Paul is not a mainstream candidate, which comes as a great disadvantage to his supporters who believe he has the right answers to fixing the nation's problems.

To his credit, Paul has been at the forefront of political thought, condemning the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and his concern with the Federal Reserve -- which, until recently, was not part of the Republican rhetoric.

In general, Americans are comfortable with the traditional politician, and Ron Paul is not your traditional politician, for better or worse.

Even in the current era of the Tea Party movement, which attempts to fight much of the old Republican trends, it is likely Paul will have an uphill battle fighting off the traditional Republican. It is equally likely, Paul isn't concerned with actually becoming president, but more about advancing his political philosophies on the American people.

Email: jfurlong@ksl.com