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.
you wrote:
The druggies, like the sex perverts, can only perpetuate an ever increasing market for their filth by molesting the minds and bodies of the young ones.
Recreational drug use has been chemical warfare waged against the young people of this country since the 1960s...
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I don't do drugs. But I would be willing to bet that we both drink beer. Think about this.
When they came for the employees of the oldest profession in the world, I did not speak out, as I had no interest in purchasing sex.
When they came for the purveyors of what was deemed to be "obscene" or "offensive", I did not speak out, as I was not a fan of entertainers like Lenny Bruce or Howard Stern.
When they came to ban the female mammary gland from TV, I did not speak out, because Brian Boitano told me not to.
When they came for the people who don't wear seatbelts, I did not speak out, as I always wore my seatbelt.
When they came for the marijuana smokers, I did not speak out, as I was not a marijuana smoker.
When they came for the steroid users, I did not speak out, as I was not a steroid user.
When they came for the gamblers, I did not speak out, as I was not a gambler.
When they came for the cigarette smokers, I did not speak out, as I was not a smoker.
When they came for the overweight and the obese, I did not speak out, as I was not overweight or obese.
When they came for the drinkers (again), I did not speak out, as I was not a drinker.
Then they came for me...and there was nobody left to speak out.
I agree 100%. That was a peripheral part of my post.
I don't expect the GOP to take back the House for another decade or more, and then lots of stuff have to align against them like it did in 1994, and against us in 2006.
I'll read it when I get the chance, probably later this week. Thanks for sharing it!
The party and its elected officials don't mock and denigrate you, or they rarely do. A few powerless party loyalists, like me, mock and denigrate you. Rightly, because you mock and denigrate the party, and put your country in danger by letting Democrats win. No halfway intelligent Republican expects "subservience" from you people. We do expect rationality and believe strongly that you ought to vote for us. I don't consider myself "subservient" to the party just because I vote for it and see no other option.
I don't expect the GOP to take back the House for another decade or more, and then lots of stuff have to align against them like it did in 1994, and against us in 2006.
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In the words of that great poet and philosopher William Joel:
"You may be wrong, but for all I know, you may be right."
My feeling is that there is no way Americans will see Nancy's San Francisco values and Rangels posturing and name calling for two years and then vote for them or their ilk again.
EVER.
Than we can go back to being the party of limited government. I think this "loss" in November is the best thing that has ever happened to the conservative movement.
Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to take 3 steps forward. Think big picture.
If you believe like I do that "Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem" like Ronald Reagan said or "The government that is big enough to give you everything you need, is big enough to take away everything you want" like Goldwater said, then Libertarians are our natural allies.
Don't piss on them.
The total abandonment of fiscal conservatism has angered MANY who aren't in the group motived by "theocratic" concerns.
I don't believe you.
We also have the Rosie O'Donnell wing of the Republican party who see the Christians and Jews as more of a threat than the Islamics... screw them too...
The homo-pandering, religious bashing, dope smoking intellectual lazies...
We also have the Rosie O'Donnell wing of the Republican party who see the Christians and Jews as more of a threat than the Islamics... screw them too...
The homo-pandering, religious bashing, dope smoking intellectual lazies who believe crap like the article that started this thread...
Do you really think libertarian's don't vote?
I favor smaller government, want the government out of my personal business and the legalization of marijuana. It's been 32 years since I last smoked a joint and even if pot was legal now I wouldn't smoke it because I don't like the way it makes me feel. Does this make me a libertarian?
But wait...I don't want homosexual marriage, I don't like abortion and I support the WOT.
Guess I don't fit in with the R's though because I don't want morality legislated.
The discussion was about the effect of libertarians either voting for the Libertarian candidate vs. voting Dem. I'm sure some don't vote, some do, just like everyone else. I'd venture to guess anyone who has gone to the trouble to know enough about politics to know they are a libertarian are more likely to vote than the population at large.
Yes, there are many liberty minded folks in the Republican Party. They have not been well served by the last six years of Republican rule, thought again it is maybe marginally better than if the Donks had been running thing.
Tough choices all around.
From the article:
"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."
This is a non-sequitur. If one posits that "socially conservative" means "eager to have the government enact right-wing social controls" (a popular usage, whether or not it's accurate), it does not follow that "socially liberal" means "favoring less government in personal issues." "Socially liberal" in fact means "eager to have the government enact left-wing social controls."
Tough. BY YOUR OWN ARGUMENT, you have to suck it up and vote for the Republicans anyway.
That became particularly evident when they helped shoot down the administration's initiative to return control of Social Security "contributions" to their owners.
I have been a life long GOP voter, I have Libertarian leanings. Our founders were for the most part Libertarians. While I usually vote GOP I have been turned off by their swing toward more socialist style programs and fiscal irresponsibility. The article is correct, if the GOp wants to win, they need to be fiscally conservative. I personally beleive that the positions of the evangelical voters have no business in politics. Government should govern by what is in the Constitution not what is blowing in the wind.
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