Romney got 20 percent of the vote, Jindal got 14 percent, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Texas Congressman Ron Paul were tied for third, with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee following.
The conference ended on Saturday with a keynote address from conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
"All we need is to nominate the right candidate. It's no more complicated than that," said Limbaugh, according to published remarks.
This is the third year that Romney came out on top at the conference, known as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Romney essentially came in second in the 2008 Republican presidential bid to the more centrist Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Those polled were 1,757 Republican Party activists.
Of those polled, only 4 percent approved of the job President Barack Obama is currently doing.
Forty-four percent said that they were not satisfied with the field of Republican candidates currently available for them to vote on.
Republicans polled most feared the Democrat-ruled government’s expansion of government spending, and the nationalization of the health care system second most.
2012 Platform?
In a speech published by CPAC early last month, Romney highlighted attacks on American culture as “most fundamental,” potentially the cornerstone for a 2012 presidential bid.
“The threat—the threat to our culture comes from within. In the 1960s there were welfare programs that created a culture of poverty in our country,” said Romney, giving a loosely veiled attack on the $787 billion stimulus bill that passed Congress two weeks ago.
Romney described the attack on culture in explicit terms as lax moral values.
“Tolerance for pornography, even celebration of it, and sexual promiscuity, combined with the twisted incentives of government welfare, have led to today's grim realities,” said Romney.
“Sixty-eight percent of African-American kids born out of wedlock; 45 percent of Hispanic kids, 25 percent of white kids—how much harder it is for these kids to succeed in school and in life.”
As for foreign policy, Romney seemed to take a cue from President Barack Obama, playing down the Middle East and playing up the emerging threat from China.
“If we don't change course, Asia or China will pass us by as the economic superpower, just as we passed England and France during the last century,” said Romney.
