Call it the first scuffle between the camps of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who are likely to go head-to-head for a similar slice of the GOP primary electorate if they both run for president this cycle.

It's a college rivalry: Here comes the battle of the student draft movements.

Not long before the already-formed Students for Daniels draft organization started airing TV ads in Iowa in New Hampshire, up popped Students for Mitt. And yes, there will be scores on Saturday. The annual CPAC straw poll in Washington, D.C., will survey conservative activists about who is their top choice for the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday and Friday. Results will be released on Saturday. Students from both groups plan to attend the conference, vote in the straw poll and round up more supporters.

And for added delicious irony: The draft Daniels effort is headquartered at Yale in New England, where Romney lives, whereas the Mitt movement is based out of Vanderbilt in Tennessee, where Daniels spent part of his childhood.

Vanderbilt University junior Garrett Sweitzer, said he started organizing "Students for Mitt" several weeks ago, when he had not yet heard about the effort to draft Daniels that began last fall.

The student groups have slightly different motivations, anyway. Romney is putting a campaign together now, while Daniels is still mulling over the possibility.

Consequently, Sweitzer explained, "The goal of ‘Students for Mitt' is not to get Mitt to run; he will decide to run regardless of whether he has student support. We're trying to draft student support for him that can be mobilized later and be in place to get out the vote."

The Daniels group formed a PAC that has raised a little money and plans to air more TV advertising in advance of the Indiana governor's appearance at CPAC on Friday night to help get the Hoosier some buzz. Max Eden, the Yale student who founded the group, said Students for Daniels will bring to CPAC about 50 people armed with t-shirts, palm cards and buttons to make their presence known.

The Romney student group launched a Facebook page and has been spreading awareness through word of mouth. Sweitzer is headed to the Beltway today to gin up support on the George Washington University and American University campuses in Washington and round up students to hit the CPAC conference on Thursday and Friday and parade around in Students for Mitt gear. He said he's got about 75 students committed to hand out literature and whip up votes.

The match will be on display Saturday when the straw poll votes are tabulated.

CPAC director Lisa DePasquale said between 10,000 and 11,000 conservative activists register for the conservative confab each year, and about 5,000 of those attendees are students who are eligible to vote in the straw poll.

"For students, it's sort of like their spring break," DePasquale said.

Part of the attraction for students is that a college ID gets them into the conference for just $35, a steal compared to the $175 three-day conference fee for other attendees. And for the Republican Party, which generally lags behind Democrats in courting the youth vote, CPAC's discounted student rate helps the cause.

Young Conservatives Coalition President Christopher Malagisi said in part for that reason, the straw poll is mostly student-driven.

"Students tend to be more excited than the adults attending to vote in the straw poll because voting is generally new to them," he said. "They get to come to CPAC and see their heroes who they've seen on FOX News speak live for the first time."

But Malagisi pointed out that Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president in 2008, won the straw poll last year with 31 percent of the vote and has performed well in smaller straw polls in the last few years. For that reason, Malagisi said, activists may not take the results very seriously.

Of course, Romney won the 2007 CPAC straw poll and had organized support for it just as he was launching his first presidential run. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani trailed him by just four percentage points. Romney repeated the performance with a larger share of the vote in 2008, just two days after he conceded the presidential race onstage at the CPAC conference, and he came out on top again for a three-peat in 2009. Romney was second to Paul last year with 22 percent of the vote.

Daniels scored 2 percent of the straw poll vote in 2010. He did not speak at CPAC last year.

This year, there's one critical difference to remember as Romney and Daniels compete in the straw poll: Romney will speak at the conference on Friday morning, before straw poll voting closes at 5:00 pm that afternoon. Daniels will speak Friday evening, several hours after voting ends.

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