This weekend, the Republicans will be having a pretty big 2008 cattle-call down in Memphis, the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. For our purposes, the most important thing about the event will be Saturday's presidential straw poll, which is being sponsored by The Hotine.

Like Chris, I'm a big fan of straw polls to gauge the enthusiasm among a party's activist base for candidates. The attendees at these events really are the opinion makers who will have a lot of influence on primary voters. Even if the primary voters themselves don't yet know who they're going to be voting for, these straw polls can serve as a fairly good indicator.

So how is the track record of the SRLC's straw poll? Well, check out the results of the poll in 1998. It was pretty good when it came to calling the front-runner, even if it relegated John McCain to the same also-ran pool as Christie Whitman, George Pataki, Bill Weld, and Alan Keyes.

GOP Primary Matchups
                                     1st Choice           2nd Choice         1st/2nd Combined
                                     Raw     %age       Raw     %age       %age
 George W. Bush           201     18%         132     13%         31%
 Steve Forbes               161       15           100     10             25
 Dan Quayle                 132       12           124     12             24
 Fred Thompson           107       10             98       9             19
 John Ashcroft               100       9             96         9           18
 Lamar Alexander         88         8               91       9             17
 Newt Gingrich               69         6             56       5             11

Now, one thing that can really muck up a straw poll is a candidate stacking the deck. Let me give you an example. At the Conservative Political Action Committee convention in 1999, Gary Bauer wound up winning the presidential straw poll. If you're scratching your head as to how that's even possible, I don't blame you -- Bauer never had any serious chance of winning. But he did manage to stack the deck at the conference by paying for a number of activists to attend via "scholarships." They came, cheered loudly for Bauer, voted for him in the straw poll, took part in a few specifically anti-choice events, but otherwise, did not get too involved.

Now, something similar could play out here. Home state Senator Bill Frist has apparently been trying to organize groups of local activists from Nashville to make the trip to Memphis for the conference. So if Frist wins big in the straw poll, I'd say it's not really so much indicative of the feelings of conservatives as Frist's local organizational prowess. On the other hand, if Frist performs badly, it's very bad news for him, as it means he couldn't even rally locals to his cause. This is why I don't think it makes sense for candidates to try to game straw polls. They stand to lose credibility for an outcome that's ultimately not all that helpful, especially if the result is less than legitimate.

I have a feeling Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee could surprise people with a solid showing, based on the geography factor -- his constituents live right across the river. If Senator George Allen performs well, it will give him some buzz, coming on top of his first place showing in the CPAC straw poll. These are just two examples of possible outcomes, so we'll have to wait and see how everything plays out. Along with just about everyone else interested in 2008, I'll be very interested to find out the results on Saturday night.