Bachmann’s team quietly confident about straw poll results

AMES, Iowa – Some members of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s staff are quietly confident that she will win Saturday’s Iowa Straw Poll.

Supporters were still showing up to register at Bachmann’s tent at 3 p.m. central time, just an hour before the voting closed, while a few minutes later at former Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s tent speakers were plaintively warning supporters that there were just 45 minutes left to vote – and the registration tables stood mostly empty.

{mosads}Firm numbers were not available for attendance, but early estimates indicated about 17,000 voters.

One person close to the Bachmann campaign said, “Based upon the tickets we gave away, [our number] should come in north of 6,000, for sure.”

Sources close to Rep. Ron Paul’s campaign said they had handed out 4,700 tickets.

A Pawlenty campaign source said their team had given out all of their 3,000 tickets and handed out more in the waning hours.

Bachmann Communications Director Alice Stewart didn’t confirm or deny what others were saying privately. “We’re certainly not counting out chickens before they hatch,” said Stewart. But she pointed out that there were many Republicans brought in by outside groups who had not committed to a candidate as of this morning, and said that a lot of them “are coming our way.”

“She’s left no hand unshaken and it looks like that’s paying off for us,” Stewart said.

At Pawlenty’s tent, spokesman Alex Conant was tight-lipped about the campaign’s results, saying only, “we feel good.”

John Robinson, a major Pawlenty donor who was one of the three people who legally incorporated Pawlenty’s campaign, said that the campaign’s turnout had gone “well beyond our confirmation list” but that the results were “a hard thing to predict.”

Robinson said that if Bachmann did have 7,000 supporters in attendance, the number Bachmann’s food vendors said they were on pace for serving, she would be the “runaway winner,” which would not bode well for Pawlenty’s campaign and hurt fundraising.

“The last several weeks [donors] have been keeping their powder dry,” Robinson said. “As much of a circus as this is, if you don’t place very well it’ll impact the next several months.”

Gary Howard, a spokesman for Rep. Ron Paul, said that he had no idea who was going to win the straw poll, but that if Paul finished near the top that would show the strength of his campaign. “It isn’t 1,000 college students coming to vote in a ballroom somewhere,” he pointed out, referring to Paul’s earlier success at winning straw polls. “It’s all Iowans.”

This post was updated at 5:50 p.m.