Capitol Alert

You might have seen some buzz on Twitter or in your e-mail inbox about Senate wannabee Chuck DeVore and GOP guv-hopeful Steve Poizner crushing respective rivals Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman in the state party convention straw poll.

But as CNN's Peter Hamby points out: "One problem: There was no official straw poll at the California Republican Party Convention."

"We did not conduct a straw poll at this convention whatsoever," California GOP chairman Ron Nehring said in an e-mail.

So who did? An aide to DeVore -- a state Assemblyman who has actively courted the party's conservative wing as he prepares to battle Fiorina for the Republican Senate nomination -- acknowledged that Sunday's poll was engineered by the DeVore campaign, even though it was described as a "CRP straw poll" in an e-mail to supporters.

"It was not connected to the party," said DeVore spokesman Joshua Trevino. "We printed up the ballots, and they were distributed on Saturday night."

Trevino said in an interview that it was never the intention to give off the impression that the straw poll was party-sponsored.

"Our assumption was that everyone knew what we assumed they knew, which was that the party these days doesn't run a straw poll," he said.

He said organizers handed out ballots, which had the gubernatorial candidates' names listed first in alphabetical order, to attendees leaving the Saturday night speeches. About 200 ballots were returned to a box outside the DeVore convention suite.

It was not a function of people who already like Chuck," he said of the poll's methodology, though he conceded: "This is not scientific, this is not the height of polling, it's a straw poll it is what it is."

More convention wrap-up items:

• All three GOP guv hopefuls addressed the party over the weekend. Missed the main show? Read the prepared text of speeches by Tom Campbell , Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman .
• As Jack Chang reports, some social conservatives weren't feeling too optimistic about their options.
• Some convention-goers got creative with costumes to take jabs at gubernatorial candidates.
• Whitman didn't get creative in her response to reporters' repeated questions about why she failed to vote for most of her adult life. Listen to her stick to the I'm sorry line as the press presses her to explain why she stayed home from the polls for so many years.

This post was updated at 12:50 with additional comments from Josh Trevino.