Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was the top pick by Republican activists for 2016 that gathered this weekend in New Hampshire, said a new survey on Saturday.
Paul took over 15% of the vote from attendees at the Nashua Republican Leadership Conference. The survey group was a GOP company named WPA Opinion Research.
Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey was second at 13%. Doctor Ben Carson, Scott Walker the Governor of Wisconsin and Rick Santorum the former Senator of Pennsylvania were all tied at 11%. Bobby Jindal the Governor of Louisiana earned 9% followed by Jeb Bush the former governor of Florida at 8%.
New Hampshire is an important state on the early primary trail for the presidency and many of the potential list of candidates polled on Saturday have made pilgrimages to the Granite State ahead of the primaries set for 2016.
Bolton, Santorum and Jindal all were speakers at the conference that took place Friday and Saturday.
Over 223 attendees participated in the survey at the two-day conference with 60% of whom are residents of New Hampshire. Of the participants in the poll, 43% were referred to as very conservative, 39% somewhat conservative and more than 17% as moderate.
This was the second victory in a poll by Paul in the same number of weeks. The senator from Kentucky won last week’s straw poll held at the Conservative Political Action Conference that was held last Saturday at National Harbor, Maryland.
In that straw poll, Paul took 31% of the overall voting, which was 20% higher than his next closest challenger.
The presidential campaigns for the 2016 elections will start in earnest following the midterm elections that will be held in November of this year.
On the Democratic side, it is widely thought that Hillary Clinton will be the favorite if she were to declare her candidacy for the 2016 elections.
