The Ames straw poll: petit guide...

"What is the Ames Straw Poll?

The short answer is that it is a straw poll, held by the Iowa Republican Party as a part of a fundraising dinner, in Ames, Iowa. Ames -- the home of Iowa State University (go Cyclones!) -- is located in Story County, which sits in the dead center of the state. This marks it as a symbolic location, the ideal place to officially kick off six months of state-wide political festivities.

The Ames Straw Poll has been conducted every year there hasn't been an incumbent GOP president since 1979. That makes it sound like a more impressive tradition than it actually is -- there have only ever been five Ames Straw Polls.

More broadly, the Ames Straw Poll serves a heroic purpose in our American lives. It gives the media something to fixate on in the critical month of August, when reporters often bellyache about there being "nothing to write about" because all the powerful men and women they have access to have left Washington, leaving everyone with a slow news month. Left to their own devices, the media can cock things up royally. Last year, during the month of August, everyone was so bored that they treated a crackpot Islamophobic minister as a subject worthy of press conferences and hours of news coverage. That probably set interfaith relations in the United States back twenty years. Thanks, guys! Great work!

This year, the Ames Straw Poll provides reporters with a safe place to do some work that shouldn't be too mentally taxing. To cover the Ames Straw Poll, all you need to do is memorize a few names, be able to count, and know that the person with the most votes "wins" and the person with the least votes "loses.""

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/12/ames-straw-poll_n_924828.html