Herman Cain wins the Florida Republican Party Straw poll
Perry was the only candidate to file class all-in with the poll, organized by the Republican Party of Florida and held in Orlando. His supporters had targeted the 3,500 delegates and Mr. Perry himself had got some other candidates to avoid the event.
But Mr. Cain won the election with 37% of the votes 2657 votes. Perry finished a distant second with just over 15%.
Mitt Romney, who has been dueling with Mr. Perry about the status of front-runner in opinion polls nationally, in a close third in the Florida survey, with 14%. Romney is building a presence in Florida, but he said it is not actively campaigning in any poll.
Florida activists showed little enthusiasm for the representative Michele Bachmann, who took only 1.5% of the vote. Ms. Bachmann had won a poll last month in Iowa, where participants are believed to include a large number of conservative evangelical Christians.
Second Mr. Perry covers complete a difficult stretch for governor of Texas after he stumbled several times in a debate Thursday night, also held in Orlando. In interviews, many Florida Republicans said they had attended the debate back waiting for the governor of Texas in the poll. But reconsidered after his poor performance.
"I planned to support Rick Perry, but I was a little disappointed with his performance," said Fred Scheible, a delegate who helped former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2008.
In the debate, Mr. Perry struggled to stop the attacks of his rivals and was repeatedly rebuffed by his chief rival, Romney, former governor of Massachusetts.
Perry also angered some conservatives standing next to a Texas law that had signed the illegal immigrants eligible for state tuition at the university. At one point in the debate, Mr. Perry suggested that opponents of the law "have a heart" - a line of Mr. Romney quickly adopted their own attacks against the governor of Texas.
"We were all looking at Perry as our knight in shining armor, but we are discovering that you have a burden," said Joyce Estes, a delegate from Apalachicola, before the vote. "The question is how much luggage can accept."
Polls show the race a two-man contest between Mr. Perry and Romney, triumph again catapult Mr. Cain in the presidential image after its offer languished during the summer.
Later, Mr. Cain praised the victory as "a sign of our growing momentum and that my application can not be ignored."
Perry entered the event with all the momentum. A Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this week gave Mr. Perry a nine point lead over Romney among Republicans in Florida, 31% to 22%.
In other results of the straw poll in Florida, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum The former was fourth, with almost 11%.
TexasRon Representative Paul won just over 10%, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won just over 8%.
The former Utah governor Jon Huntsman won just over 2%, ahead of Ms. Bachmann
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