Sen. Ted Cruz won the 2014 Values Voter Summit straw poll for the second year in a row on Saturday, following an extremely popular speech Friday in which the Texas Republican promised a kind of salvation from the Obama presidency.
Cruz earned 25% of the 1,900 votes cast at this weekend’s Values Voter Summit to be president, less than the 42% he received last year shortly after he led the government into a the shutdown. Dr. Ben Carson, a regular straw poll contender, earned 20%, while Gov. Mike Huckabee, another speaker at the event, came in third with 12% of the vote.
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Hillary Clinton earned one vote, likely the work of a jokester.
The straw poll for vice president saw similar results: Carson and Cruz earned 22% and 14% of the vote, respectively.
Perhaps the only surprise of the poll was Bobby Jindal, who earned 11% support from attendees in the vote for vice president.
Jindal didn’t initially excite the socially conservative crowd, but as he told jokes and stories about his family, he gained momentum. By the end of his address, the audience was excited and engaged. His straw poll performance indicates the crowd was ultimately impressed.
Related: 2016 GOP contenders woo religious conservatives at Values summit
Cruz, the son of a preacher, was right at home during his speech Friday, forgoing the Teleprompters to walk around the stage delivering an address that was part stump speech and part sermon, based loosely around Psalm 30, predicting cosmic deliverance from the Obama administration.
“In 2017, with a Republican president in office, we’re going to sign legislation repealing every word of Obamacare,” he said. “Joy cometh in the morning.”
Cruz pitched himself as a values-driven Republican with a plan to “turn this country around.”
“There are people in Washington who say Republicans to win have to abandon values,” he said. “Our values are who we are. Our values are why we’re here.”
Jane Timm