GOP Candidates will trek to Hilton Coliseum on the campus of Iowa State University today for the crucial Ames Straw Poll. The Straw Poll is part of a day-long event filled with speeches, barbecues, and fundraising for the Iowa Republican Party, which is why only those candidates who purchased space from the party, at a minimum price of $15,000, will be allowed to speak. For many candidates, this is the first test of their organizational strength and name recognition among Iowa voters. But other than that, the poll is utterly meaningless. 
As Politico’s Roger Simon puts it: “The Ames Straw Poll is a delightful fraud, an amiable hoax, that most people in Iowa don’t care about, but the national media eat up because the event seems so charmingly ‘Iowan.’ … It is organized bribery on a grand scale.”