Posted on 09/03/2010 10:27:10 PM PDT by citizenredstater9271
In a recent series of posts (finale here), I estimated the size of the liberty constituency in each state by conducting a principal components analysis of four variables: per capita donors to the Ron Paul campaign, unexplained Ron Paul primary vote share, mean Libertarian Party presidential vote share 1996-2004, and Libertarian Party presidential vote share in 2008. Then, I regressed estimates of individual freedom from the Ruger-Sorens Index on the estimate of liberty constituency size, finding that states with larger liberty constituencies have more freedom.
[snip]
To do this, I first added 2000 Ron Paul donors and Libertarian Party voters to the state, along with 4000 Ron Paul voters. (Why? Because elsewhere I’ve found that each additional Free Stater in a New Hampshire town generated two additional votes for Ron Paul. Now, of course, there probably won’t be another Ron Paul campaign, but there will be other ways in which libertarian constituencies evince themselves – remember, I’m just trying to get a reliable measure of the size of the liberty bloc; the inputs as such don’t matter.) Then I figured out how that would change the estimate of the size of the libertarian bloc in New Hampshire. The aggressive assumption behind this move is worth noting. In particular, I’m assuming that the overall ideological distribution in NH on the libertarian-populist dimension shifts as a result of these activists. In other words, the overall relationship behind number of activists and size of liberty constituency remains constant – the liberty activists don’t just become an ideological ghetto. Presumably, it will take some time for activists moving into the state to have an effect on the mindset of the people already there, so the estimates I’m giving here are for a fairly optimistic, long-run-ish view of what the FSP can accomplish.
(Excerpt) Read more at pileusblog.wordpress.com ...
> The liberty movement in New Hampshire is staying strong.
If the Free Staters don’t start having more kids, and lots of them, they will be gone in a generation, having had less lasting impact than the Shakers.
I’ve lived in NH for more than 30 years. NH has swung WAY to the Left in that time.
In just the last four years, NH has gone from one of the most Homeschool-friendly states to one of the most hostile.
Last year, the State Legislature passed, and the Governor signed, a Gay Marriage bill.
The “Perverts Bill”, which would have effectively eliminated gender-specific public bathrooms, was narrowly defeated.
While Free Staters offered support to combat the hostile homeschool legislation, they were mostly AWOL in the fights against Gay Marriage and the Perverts Bill.
About the only time I see Free Staters out in force is to combat taxes and gun control, and to support legislation to decriminalize drugs.
That’s because Free Staters, for the most part, are libertarians, NOT conservatives.
Any conservative gains in NH this election will be due much more to the overreaching by the DemonRATs than to any of the efforts of the Free Staters.
About the only thing in support of Liberty that we’ve been able to retain in this state is the relatively liberal gun law.
You still need a permit for CCW.
Property Taxes and Fees have gone WAY up.
Homeschooling is regulated nearly to death.
Perverts have made huge gains.
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