Ron Paul President

Rand Paul is winner of Conservative Political Action Conference presidential straw poll of 2014 Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks at the Conservative Political Action Committee annual conference in National Harbor, Md., Friday, March 7, 2014. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

OXON HILL, Md. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has won the Conservative Political Action Conference's presidential preference poll.

The overwhelming win is purely symbolic, but reflects the Republican senator's popularity among conservatives who typically hold outsized influence in the GOP's presidential selection process.

Paul captured 31 percent of the vote. He won the poll last year as well.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz finished second place with 11 percent, followed by neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

None of the Republicans in the poll have formally entered the 2016 race yet.

The victory was announced Saturday evening as the annual conservative conference wrapped up. Thousands of activists flocked to suburban Washington for the three-day gathering.

Nearly 2,500 hundred activists voted. They were younger and more male than the typical electorate.

Both Mr. Rubio and Mr. Paul were elected to the Senate in the 2010 tea party wave that served as a rebuke both to President Obama and to the legacy of President George W. Bush, and this past weekends results suggest a conservative movement trying to move past the last decades fights. The results also captured the youthful and libertarian bent of the CPAC audience, where more than half of attendees were between 18 and 25 years of age, and where combatting government overreach was the most dominant philosophy. Following Mr. Paul and Mr. Rubio in the balloting was former Sen. Rick Santorum in third with just 8 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie who was not invited to speak at this years CPAC with 7 percent, and Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOPs vice presidential nominee last year, in fifth place with 6 percent. Mr. Pauls victory puts him in the footsteps of his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, who won in 2010 and 2011. Ive been standing with Rand since I came out of the womb, said Austin Alexander, a 26-year-old consultant from New York who voted for the senator in the straw poll, and who volunteered for the elder Mr. Pauls presidential campaign in 2012. Mr. Alexander said he believes the GOP is moving in the direction the Pauls espouse. Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/16/rand-paul-washington-times-cpac-2013-straw-poll/#ixzz2OZOjg0zi

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Ron Paul President