The GQR poll results are going to be announced shortly from the Straw Poll taken at the TBA conference. I expect Obama to win with a good plurality (like 40 percent). Barack's speech was powerful and full of fire. I would think it was his stump speech, as he was in full control, energizing the crowd. Anyone that came for "the speech" didn't go away empty-handed.

The video of Richardson is up on YouTube. I thought his was a great speech too, and that the distinctions he laid out showed he's winning to start fighting his way into the top-tier. Not as great as Obama, but probably exceeded his expectations further. I voted, based on the speeches, for Richardson and Obama. Richardson, cause I think he was the most substantive, and Obama for getting the best reception.

Edwards didn't give a spellbinding stump speech, it was OK, and had a few moments, but the crowd did thin out a bit, and wasn't near as loud. I'll be interested to see if the contrast with Obama, who hit all the right notes at every right tempo, parlays into a wide margin between Edwards and Obama in the straw poll results, or not. Interestingly, I sat next to a United Steelworker and his wife, both of whom thought Obama gave the best speech of the two, but were still Edwards supporters.

I missed Clinton this AM; not surprisingly she was boo'd again this year, because she was blaming the Iraqi gov't for the failures in Iraq (instead of Bush). I wonder if Clinton thought she would get out of being boo'd by going so early on the third moment, but apparently not.

This wasn't Clinton's crowd, and the contrast between the DNC Winter meetings and the TBA conference, same place same hall & much different audience, four months apart, couldn't have been wider. This poll is going to tell us whom the progressive activists in audience at TBA --a lot of them either based in DC or working with political advocacy groups aligned with the Democratic Party-- prefer.

Update [2007-6-20 15:30:43 by Jerome Armstrong]: The results are in, on Politico and the pdf doc, Obama with 29 and Edwards with 26; Clinton not too far behind with 17 percent. If you total up the first and second place votes, Obama and Edwards have 59 and 54 percent total. But looking into the polls demographics, it shows that of those that voted, 24% were aged 18-24. fwiw, I didn't get the sense that a quarter of the actual attendees to the multiple events were that young.

I sure would like to see the breakdown by age of how the attendees voted.