Like most people with at least a little taste, I prefer “The Simpsons” and “South Park” to “Family Guy.” Still, I couldn’t help but think of this “OMG who the hell cares” “Family Guy” clip upon hearing that Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders by only 49 percent to 41 percent in a straw poll conducted at the Wisconsin Democratic Convention this past weekend by WisPolitics.com.




Here’s what I read into the straw poll results: A few more highly motivated Democrats in Wisconsin cast their lot with Clinton than with Sanders. That’s it. Conventions by their nature attract the truly hard-core party faithful, so this is the perfect environment for a very liberal candidate like Sanders to do well. In addition, less than 40 percent of the more than 1,300 delegates who attended the convention even voted. We’re talking about a sliver of a sliver. It was in no way a random sample — or even a particularly meaningful sample.

Indeed, past straw polls taken at the Wisconsin Democratic Convention and Wisconsin Republican Convention have zero correlation with who the eventual nominees are. (See below for the past six Wisconsin straw polls taken for open presidential nominations for which I could find results.)

When you look at these past results, there’s just no reason to give much weight to the Democratic straw poll from last weekend. Clinton remains a prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination. I guess you could argue that this result shows Sanders has some support among very liberal Democrats. We already knew that, though, from public polls with random samples. The Wisconsin result told us nothing we didn’t already understand about the Democratic race.