GOP Is Losing Its Libertarian Voters

HUMAN EVENTS ^ | Dec 08, 2006 | David Boaz and David Kirby

[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 isn’t 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 don’t vote for the Libertarian Party. Libertarian voters likely cost Republicans the House and the Senate—also 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 Republican—72% 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 candidates—a 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, Bush’s 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, they’re not going away. They’re 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 state’s 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 Cheney’s 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 can’t win New Hampshire and the Mountain West, they can’t win a national majority. And they can’t win those states without libertarian votes. They’re 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. That’s not Ronald Reagan’s 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. That’s too many voters for any party to ignore.

Rep. Barbara Cubin (R.-Wyo.) told her Libertarian challenger after a debate, “If you weren’t sitting in that [wheel]chair, I’d 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.

[B Knotts]

You think this is a political strategy? It's not. It's a moral and ethical objection to a hideous misuse of human lives.

Furthermore, you failed to address the point I agreed to...whether it is commonplace for the federal government to operate outside its constitutional authority is beside the point. What libertarian supports government funding of medical experimentation?

[Daveinyork]

What, exactly is a "social conservative"? Don't they also want smaller government?

[mysterio]

A vote/no vote in spite is no lesson, it is treason.

Libertarians voting for libertarians is treason now? Ok. Bookmarked.

[Sunsong]

You people have no right to hold an entire party, and thereby an entire country, hostage like you are trying to.

But do you think that the GOP does?

[neverdem]

Boy there is a real smart move.

I didn't want it. I post stories because I believe they should be posted to inform folks, not because I necessarily agreed or disagreed with the story. I could be either way. I'm a registered Conservative in NY with some libertarian sympathies. I didn't want the pubbies to lose either House of Congress, much less both, even though they richly deserved to lose. You can check my posting history if you don't remember, but I frequently ended my posts in comment# 1 with the following pics and text when I thought it was appropriate before Election Day:

Actions speak louder than words. Here's some of what the dems have done in the past.

On April 29, 1975, hundreds of Americans and South Vietnamese were evacuated from Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam, by helicopter. The following day the city was captured by the North Vietnamese, signaling the end of the Vietnam War.
UPI/THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE

While working as a journalist in Vietnam, Nayan Chanda took this photo of a Communist tank entering the presidential palace in Saigon on April 30, 1975. Chanda, now editor of YaleGlobal Online, will speak about his experiences there at a panel marking the 30th anniversary of the event.

AP
An anti-American demonstration in Tehran after Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in November 1979.

AP
The scorched wreckage of an American C-130 Cargo aircraft involved in the failed August 1980 attempt to rescue the hostages.

AP
Blindfolded and with his hands bound, an American hostage is led by young militants to a mob in front of the US Embassy in Tehran, Iran in November 1979.

[Sunsong]

I think that's because they don't get out much.

It sure seems like that when you read the gay bashing threads!

[MeanWestTexan]

"What, exactly is a "social conservative"? Don't they also want smaller government?"

Well, the secret police to check and see if you are drinking at home, watching dirty movies (as defined by them), and/or teaching your children about Charles Darwin will necessitate a slight increase in the budget.

[surely_you_jest]

What, exactly is a "social conservative"? Don't they also want smaller government?

A Church Lady by another name. Regardless of his or her gender.

When Church Ladies got together with Grifters, also known as career politicians, they make lots of little Elmer Gantrys.

When little Elmer Gantrys grow up into big Elmer Gantrys they used to call themselves Democrats. But now they call themselves Republicans.

And regardless of whether Elmer Gantrys call themselves Democrats or Republicans, they don't want smaller government.

[brooklyn dave]

The Republican Party has to become more libertarian in many areas especially spending. One area they cannot go the liberatrian route is immigration--that will be a loser. I have voted LP in the past because the Republican candidate wasn't viable to begin with (they rarely are in NY). Unfortunately the LP is seen as a joke in many Republican circles. In NY I have to agree, only because of the crazy stances they take. Maybe in other areas of the country the LP is saner.

[Jack Black]

It's not close to the same, it's exactly the same outcome.

In most cases yes. In a really close race voting L might result in an R winnning instead of voting D.

Imagine a race with 100 voters and three candidates, R, D and L. Say that 45 voters vote D, and 46 voters vote R. If the remaining 9 libertarians vote L the R wins. If they vote D the D wins.

In other words voting L subtracts one from the R total, but doesn't add one to the D total. In a very close race this might allow the R to sneak by.

[Small-L]

"If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -- if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is."

Emphasis added, attribution left off on purpose. If you really want to know go here.

[GSlob]

Well said, Sir.

[BigTom85]

What, exactly is a "social conservative"? Don't they also want smaller government?

The average joe social conservative wants smaller governemnt and believes that a lot of the federal bureaucracies should be ended. The Washington DC political class 'social conservative' comes out ever few yrs on a campaign trail and tells the average joe that they want to end endless bureaucracy.. blah blah blah. However, once the average joes send the POLITICIAN back the DC, he/she votes to create more bureaucracy and bottomless pit social programs.

[GSlob]

Dear Sir Francis:
Having been born and grown up in the thucking USSR, I'd say that I have seen the marxists [I mean the real ones, and not the figments of your imagination] in all shapes, sizes and colors. By mistaking atheists for marxists you merely demonstrate ignorance and/or inexperience. While the marxists are secular, not every secularist is marxist. For example, sincere l/Libertarians [from whatever "l"], if secular, are NOT marxists. Marxism is all about the paradise on earth and ordering others goose-stepping into it. The flavor of that paradise - be ir workers', Aryan, christian, talaboonic - does not matter one iota.

[lasereye]

You've got libertarians complaining the GOP is controlled by the social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage etc. While I think that's overstated Bush has overall been quite conservative on social issues and done most of what social conservatives want. At the same time you see all these complaints on Free Republic that Bush hasn't been serious about abortion etc. Makes me think some "social conservatives" smoke what the libertarians want to legalize.

[dforest]

You are exactly right.

[mugs99]

A vote/no vote in spite is no lesson, it is treason.

Same can be said of a lesser of two evils vote.
.

[lasereye]

he secret police to check and see if you are drinking at home, watching dirty movies (as defined by them), and/or teaching your children about Charles Darwin will necessitate a slight increase in the budget.

I must have missed that.

[Tribune7]

People who call themselves fisically conservative and socially liberal are liberal. The source of our economic rights is the same as the source of all our other rights. Those who discount it will soon find ways of justifying the taking of the economic rights of others for their benefit.

[Poser]

There is a big difference between Libertarians and libertarians. The party is a bunch of pro-drug loonies. The political philosophy is common among conservatives.

I find the Reagan Republicans to be closer to the libertarian political philosophy than the Libertarian party. The current crop of RINOs are neither conservative nor libertarian.