Actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson won the state Republican Party's first straw poll Saturday night. Not bad for a guy who's not yet a candidate. (Or maybe that's part of the appeal.)

Chairman Luke Esser's e-mail update sent last night says Thompson got half of all votes cast at the party's 25th Annual Gala Dinner & Auction. There were more than 570 people there, though I'm not sure how many people voted. Here are the results:

Fred Thompson 50% Mitt Romney 16% Rudy Giuliani 15% Duncan Hunter 10% John McCain 5% Tom Tancredo 1% Tommy Thompson 1% Mike Huckabee 1% Newt Gingrich <1%

Wrote Esser:

Clearly the other candidates have some work to do to match the support that former Sen. Thompson is receiving from grassroots activists.

Two presidential candidates — Sen. John McCain and Rep. Duncan Hunter — had representatives campaigning at the event (every presidential campaign was invited to participate).

The Christian Science Monitor has a good story on Thompson.

Political strategists say his appeal has as much to do with conservative displeasure with the current Republican field as with his celebrity from a string of movie and television roles as a government authority figure.

There's lots of talk about how skilled Thompson is as a politician and actor. There are comparisons made to Ronald Reagan. But the Monitor watched his recent speech to a conservative group in Newport Beach, Calif. and found "reviews of Mr. Thompson's public debut as a semi-candidate were decidedly mixed."

Members of the Lincoln Club of Orange County, an influential conservative group that hosted the event, praised Thompson's plain-spoken style, his appeal to Southern voters, and his impeccable ideological credentials on issues like limited government, lower taxes and border security. But several people said they were worried by his sedate delivery — where was the fire, one man asked — and a lack of specifics in his homespun critiques of Democrats and inside-the-Beltway Washington.

UPDATE: About 29 percent of the people at the dinner voted. And of those, half voted for Thompson. That tells me there are a lot of undecided Republicans. You would expect the crowd at the GOP's annual dinner to be more focused on politics and the presidential campaign than most people. But even they either can't decide or -- like me -- just think this is bloody early to begin the presidential campaign.

And another thought: Duncan Hunter did better than John McCain? McCain's local backers have been among the most visible at GOP events, and still they only get 5 percent of the true believers?