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 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.
A common leftist claim... typical in Santa Cruz, Berkeley, San Francisco and other places. If you want to see a theocracy, visit them sometime - - if you have not already.
I have never once claimed to be a "conservative." (Do a search and see for yourself.)
I am also not an orthodox atheist who does everything in contravention to the Judaic culture this country and its laws are founded upon, just for the sake of throwing crap at the Christians.
I happen to agree with the Jews and Christians on a myriad of political issues for logical reasons I have stated in many places...
All cultures are not equal. The trouble with the liberal-tarians is that they want anarchy, but when a fellow like myself is all too willing to give it to them, they will pee all over themselves and run to the nanny state they say they oppose.
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.
You have never been to a university campus...
Why, I have been to campuses - both in the US and outside. Where you see "cultural marxism", I see the behavioral/sociological one- i.e. I'm trying to look much deeper. I gave you an illustration with clintons- and there are legions of them in senior corporate ranks, for example.
Funny. I didn't notice. You seemed like so many other Bushbots you find around here.
Don't confuse small "l" libertarians with Big "L" Libertarians (members of the party.)
I have some libertarian beliefs myself but do NOT vote Libertarian, since they support open borders, abortion on demand, no real defense against terrorism, etc.
and a government's design-Libertarians want our Government to return to the original intent of its designers.
You answer my question first bright boy. Where exactly in the US Constitution is the 'two party system' mentioned?
Article, Section, and Paragraph if you please.
L
Nowhere--where, exactly, in my posts did I suggest any such thing? Paragraph and sentence if you please, dim boy.
Yeah, exactly. Pity you can't seem to understand the very plain point.
Libertarians want our Government to return to the original intent of its designers.
Which has nothing at all to do with the context of the comment you're referencing.
You need to understand basic concepts in the discussion before you keep making the same mistakes over and over, and criticizing others, when you can't even grasp the rhetorical points someone is making at the most basic level.
From post 107 on this very thread. Here are your words:
Anyone with any knowledge of history knows there are always TWO parties in a two-party system--deal with it.
Paragraph and sentence if you please, dim boy.
There it is, in all it's glory. If you'd like I can repost all three of the sentences you managed to string together but I picked the parts I felt least likely to highlight your appalling ignorance of the Constitution so as to spare you unnecessary embarrasment.
No need to thank me.
L
Nope.
You forgot the nonsensical nanny state ban on internet gambling that Republicans got behind. I don't gamble but telling someone what they can do on their own computers, in their own house, with their own money is just retarded and reeks of heavy handed Gubmint paternalism.
O.K. have a great evening!
Then Republicans shouldn't whine when the Libertarian "causes" them to lose close elections.
Libertarians should embrace a political party that mocks and denigrates them, then expects subservience on election day?
How can a party that isn't the Libertarian party--and doesn't share the values of the Libertarian party, thank God-- "abandon" the voters of another political persuasion?
________________________________________________________
Don't answer me right away. Just think about it or sleep on it tonight, OK?
I used to laugh or roll my eyes when I read about the parliamentary systems in other countries like Israel or some European countries. (even Iraq for that matter)
In order to form a governing coalition you have to have what seems like 145 different groups in your camp. Otherwise, they call for early elections and chuck you out the door. It seemed silly.
Than I thought about it for a while. That is essentially what we have here in the USA. You will never fit 300 million people under one of two umbrellas. It's the same deal here.
Did you ever read Ryan Sager's book "The Elephant in the Room: Republicans, Libertarians and the Battle to Control the Republican Party."
If you're interested, I'll post the first chapter for you.
The point is, as a fellow Reagan/Goldwater conservative we would be very lonely and powerless without other factions to vote us into office.
You can argue and complain all you want, but that's just the reality.
I heard this a lot after the election, but looking at the numbers in CA, there's the obvious third option. Turn out in traditionally republican counties was about the same as in 2002, the last midterm election. Turnout in dem strongholds, however was up 5-10%. They simply beat us at the GOTV tactics that was supposed to be Rove's strong suit.
I also think that the GOP needs to concentrate less on absentee ballots, and more on driving up the election day voting: those are the numbers that get reported, and perception is reality. Even if the GOP is up 30% in pre-election absentee votes, those numbers don't get tallied in until way after all the election day drama that depresses turnout.
I only post this so that smart guys like you can see what it takes to get Nancy Pelosi's Socialist ass out of the Speakers chair in '08. I'll tell you a funny anecdote/joke about what happens when you try to make everyone happy that you'll like. Unfortunately, that's politics though. Here's the first chapter of the book in the next post.
Required reading. I expect a book report by next week. :-)
http://www.rhsager.com/pdf/Chapter%201%20-%20Live%20from%20the%20Reagan%20Building.pdf
Alright, I know I made a tiny mistake in the book title.
It's "Evangelicals, Libertarians"....
Seriously, it's a great read. I learned a lot about the history of the conservative movement from Sager.
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