Posted on 12/10/2006 10:04:01 PM PST by neverdem
Libertarian Party candidates may have cost Senators Jim Talent (R.-Mo.) and Conrad Burns (R.-Mont.) their seats, tipping the Senate to Democratic control.
In Montana, the Libertarian candidate got more than 10,000 votes, or 3%, while Democrat Jon Tester edged Burns by fewer than 3,000 votes. In Missouri, Claire McCaskill defeated Talent by 41,000 votes, a bit less than the 47,000 Libertarian votes.
This isnt the first time Republicans have had to worry about losing votes to Libertarian Party candidates. Senators Harry Reid (Nev.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), and Tim Johnson (S.D.) all won races in which Libertarian candidates got more votes than their winning margin.
But a narrow focus on the Libertarian Party significantly underestimates the role libertarian voters played in 2006. Most voters who hold libertarian views dont vote for the Libertarian Party. Libertarian voters likely cost Republicans the House and the Senatealso dealing blows to Republican candidates in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
In our study, The Libertarian Vote, we analyzed 16 years of polling data and found that libertarians constituted 13% of the electorate in 2004. Because libertarians are better educated and more likely to vote, they were 15% of actual voters.
Libertarians are broadly defined as people who favor less government in both economic and personal issues. They might be summed up as fiscally conservative, socially liberal voters.
In the past, our research shows, most libertarians voted Republican72% for George W. Bush in 2000, for instance, with only 20 percent for Al Gore, and 70% for Republican congressional candidates in 2002. But in 2004, presumably turned off by war, wiretapping, and welfare-state spending sprees, they shifted sharply toward the Democrats. John F. Kerry got 38% of the libertarian vote. That was a dramatic swing that Republican strategists should have noticed. But somehow the libertarian vote has remained hidden in plain sight.
This year we commissioned a nationwide post-election survey of 1013 voters from Zogby International. We again found that 15 percent of the voters held libertarian views. We also found a further swing of libertarians away from Republican candidates. In 2006, libertarians voted 59% to 36% for Republican congressional candidatesa 24-point swing from the 2002 mid-term election. To put this in perspective, front-page stories since the election have reported the dramatic 7-point shift of white conservative evangelicals away from the Republicans. The libertarian vote is about the same size as the religious right vote measured in exit polls, and it is subject to swings more than three times as large.
Based on the turnout in 2004, Bushs margin over Kerry dropped by 4.8 million votes among libertarians. Had he held his libertarian supporters, he would have won a smashing reelection rather than squeaking by in Ohio.
President Bush and the congressional Republicans left no libertarian button unpushed in the past six years: soaring spending, expansion of entitlements, federalization of education, cracking down on state medical marijuana initiatives, Sarbanes-Oxley, gay marriage bans, stem cell research restrictions, wiretapping, incarcerating U.S. citizens without a lawyer, unprecedented executive powers, and of course an unnecessary and apparently futile war. The striking thing may be that after all that, Democrats still looked worse to a majority of libertarians.
Because libertarians tend to be younger and better educated than the average voter, theyre not going away. Theyre an appealing target for Democrats, but they are essential to future Republican successes. Republicans can win the South without libertarians. But this was the year that New Hampshire and the Mountain West turned purple if not blue, and libertarians played a big role there. New Hampshire may be the most libertarian state in the country; this year both the states Republican congressmen lost.
Meanwhile, in the Goldwateresque, leave us alone Mountain West, Republicans not only lost the Montana Senate seat; they also lost the governorship of Colorado, two House seats in Arizona, and one in Colorado. They had close calls in the Arizona Senate race and House races in Idaho, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Dick Cheneys Wyoming. In libertarian Nevada, the Republican candidate for governor won less than a majority against a Democrat who promised to keep the government out of guns, abortion, and gay marriage. Arizona also became the first state to vote down a state constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman.
Presidential candidates might note that even in Iowa libertarians helped vote out a Republican congressman who championed the Internet gambling ban.
If Republicans cant win New Hampshire and the Mountain West, they cant win a national majority. And they cant win those states without libertarian votes. Theyre going to need to stop scaring libertarian, centrist, and independent voters with their social-conservative obsessions and become once again the party of fiscal responsibility. In a Newsweek poll just before the election, 47% of respondents said they trusted the Democrats more on federal spending and the deficit, compared to just 31% who trusted the Republicans. Thats not Ronald Reagans Republican Party.
One more bit from our post-election Zogby poll: We asked voters if they considered themselves fiscally conservative and socially liberal. A whopping 59% said they did. When we added to the question also known as libertarian, 44% still claimed that description. Thats too many voters for any party to ignore.
Rep. Barbara Cubin (R.-Wyo.) told her Libertarian challenger after a debate, If you werent sitting in that [wheel]chair, Id slap you. It took 10 days to certify her re-election, perhaps because that Libertarian took more than 7,000 votes. A better strategy for her and other Republicans would be to try to woo libertarians back.
What is your evidence that Libertarians and others voted for 'a winner' in this past election?
The continual drumbeat of "a vote for the third-party is a vote for the Democrats" actually furthers a system that is purported to be made up of two parties but which is rapidly merging into one.
Can't we retire that old saw?
Anyone with any knowledge of history knows there are always TWO parties in a two-party system--deal with it.
Several people here have already pointed out that Republicans have become so fiscally irresponsible that the Democrats actually look better in that respect. I imagine we will be treated to a Democratic government for a few years. Perhaps that is what is needed to make the Libertarians wake up and actually vote for Libertarians rather than "waste" their votes on RINOs.
Blah blah blah, Libertarian pipe dreams are killing us.
Issuing reams of position statements and press releases that nobody will ever read.
There are actually Marxist trolls here on FreeRepublic who cloak themselves in liberal-tarianism and attack anything related to Genesis...
I could give you quite a list of their user names. They can be found a lot on the evolution, drug, genetic engineering threads, and have been bleeding over into the marriage issue threads. Their only purpose is to wage a psychological warfare on conservatives.
Some of the Bozos out there can't get past that word God, so they would just piss the entire country away and join the enemies of America; all because they have this polemic need to bash the Christians and do everything in contravention to them. I say screw them and the filthy practices they want to live by. My children are not going to inherit their squalor if I can help it.
Are all cultures equal? Hell no...
Only a cultural Marxist would think so.
Can you point out the Article, Section, and Paragraph of the Constitution which covers the 'two party' system?
Thanks in advance.
L
And this relates to my original response to you how?
L
McCain was tortured, while Hillary does the torturing.
"Anyone with any knowledge of history knows there are always TWO parties in a two-party system--deal with it."
I heartily agree - except that, in the future, those two parties might well be Libertarians and Republicrats. In actuality, the titles would most likely be something like "Conservatives' and "Liberals." There are still too many ill-informed people who believe that Libertarians just sit around smoking weed with a bunch of illegal immigrants.
I'm not a Libertarian, and Republicans like you, who were willing to excuse all sorts of ridiculousness in Washington, while we were in power, are a large part of the reason we aren't in power now.
Well, talk like this will certainly attract more "libertarian swine" to your party! I know I'd come running to your call of "Suuuuuuiiiiii!
Mark
Very good point that I overlooked.
i would agree to the extent that they have abandoned their fiscal conservatism in the past four years. No small government issues, no reform....just more growth of the Federal government.
Please show me in the Constitution where there's a "two party system" requirement... I'll wait.
Mark
Libertarians have more much more in common with Republicans than Democrats, or at least they used to - back when Republicans were interested in getting the government out of our lives.
While we're comparing I'd bet Libertarians have more in common with the founders than 'Social Conservatives' do.
I'm mostly libertarian but I always vote the lesser of two evils when the race is close, meaning I typically vote Republican. If it's not close, I'll vote Libertarian.
If Republicans care about libertarian voters, which I doubt, then they need to get series about lower taxes and act as if they are really the party of limited government. That's probably all it would take. 'Course, it doesn't look as if Republicans care very much about those two issues either.
"Libertarian" voters who vote Dem are just plain ignorant though...the same as "liberals" who vote Dem.
Zogby says 59% are effectively Libertarians
Zogby says 44% are self-aware Libertarians bump
sounds like a majority, and growing...
HitmanLV calls a meeting of the Natural Constituency of the GOP to order.
If you fail to do so, YOU, no one else, is responsible for the consequences.
don't forget the x factor;
x=how many democrat votes were obtained by hook, crook, coercion or voting
machine "repair"?
Nah... just blame it on the 1% of voters who still think having PRINCIPLES still means something...
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