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.
If libertarians want smaller, less intrusive government then they need to embrace the GOP and get to work within it. It's actually pretty simple.
But I don't believe Libertarians really care about smaller government. If they did they wouldn't be so vain about electing democrats.
I've seen posters actually threaten physical harm to others who don't want to vote for RINOs.
They weren't around long, but it happened.
When you vote for someone, that means you approve of them. In fact it's the highest form of approval you can give someone.
Do you know why? (rhetorical...I'll answer) It's because people gave their lives to protect your right to vote for the candidate of your choice.
Other Americans left pieces of themselves and lost their very lives both here in America and in far off foreign lands to protect that right for you and for me. It's not some privilege granted by some Government body someplace, it's a right you were given by your Creator.
It's not something to be given away lightly and it sure as Hell isn't something to be given to a Party instead of an individual.
I'm not much on organized religion, but I do believe that God gave me the right to vote. I also believe that with that right comes an awesome responsibility. I will not just hand over the sacred power that comes with my vote to some fool just because of his or her Party affiliation.
It would be a grave insult to both the people who fought and died to protect that right and to the Creator who thinks highly enough of the likes of me to give me that sacred right.
So don't you ever buy into that crap that a vote for a third party is a 'wasted vote'.
The only vote that's wasted is the one that isn't cast.
Sorry to pop off in your general direction.
Merry Christmas.
L
Actually it is a very apt comparision.
To bring the point home, the GOP can't reliably win elections by just being the "least unappealing", they actually have to have something that is appealing.
That has been tried for years and it hasn't worked. The bottom line is that if the GOP wants the votes of those that prefer smaller government then they need to start implementing it.
Your "simple approach" reminds me of a battered wife that has hopes of fixing her husband year after year after year.
Trying to fix something from the inside is a good initial approach, but after repeated failure it's time to leave until you either find something better or until what you leave gets the message and cleans up its act.
Democrats Aren't Ready to Give Up Pork
I think there's some reason for hope.
No, I read the bolded section perfectly well (did you? "We asked VOTERS if they considered themselves...A whopping 59% (of voters polled--my edit) said they did....44% (OF VOTERS POLLED--my edit)still claimed that description."). Considering that a majority of Americans probably consider themselves fiscally conservative and socially liberal, and a "whopping 44%" of that number consider themselves Libertarian makes zero sense--show me where ANY Libertarian candidate has pulled in numbers that would indicate a voting bloc of that size anywhere in the USA.
The GOP isn't just losing libertarians -- it betrayed them. Who in the GOP could possibly think the party has anything to offer them?
The Bush Jr. Whitehouse is by far the worst I can recall so far as individual rights and freedoms are concerned. The Bush Jr. Whitehouse likes big government and only wants it to grow bigger.
Small "l" libertarians are where the future's at. The GOP is dead; it just doesn't know it yet. The Democratic party is dead too, but at least they have some inkling of their impending irrelevance.
I've given up on the idea that either party will embrace both social liberalism (in the classical sense) and fiscal conservatism (in the modern sense). But that's where the center of mass is in the electorate at large, and sooner or later, they're going to find a political vehicle for advancing their interests and values.
We're moving towards a future with three parties -- one for fiscal liberals, one for social conservatives, and one for the rest of us. The first two are going to be permanent, persistent, vocal minorities. The last is going to be a robust permanent majority.
Maybe it's wrong, unfair, or a product of general ignorance and stupidity. Whatever. That's the future, like it or not. Me, I don't mind. YMMV and probably does.
Man, what a compelling insight. About as accurate as if one said, "Republicans smoke [anatomical parts] of male prostitutes and pages."
I don't smoke marijuana, but I think people should have that right. I don't smoke [anatomical parts] of male prostitutes, but I support your right to smoke them.
It's the poor workman who blames his tools.
Many Loserterians are never satisfied. While I too want the GOP to become, once again, the party of reduction in government, I have no interest in kissing your rear ends.
Nor should the GOP.
You people have no right to hold an entire party, and thereby an entire country, hostage like you are trying to.
If you're not yet completely blind, why don't you try keeping an eye on what the Democratic Congress tries to pull?
Then you can tell me how "evil" we Republicans are. Until such time, your act is very, very thin.
Prove it.
I have no interest in kissing your rear ends. Nor should the GOP.
Then get used to minority status.
You people have no right to hold an entire party, and thereby an entire country, hostage like you are trying to.
Actually we do.
How do you like us now?
L
That's perfectly true. And part of our positive appeal should certainly be more attention to limiting government than most in our party have shown. But many Losertarians would, I guarantee you, be complaining almost as loudly as ever.
How do I like you now?
I detest you. Your selfish, pigheaded, infantile hatred of the Republican party is contributing substantially to the decline and fall of America.
While the size of government is important, other things are extremely important too -- namely social values and national security. You may disagree on social values, but if you disagree as much as some Losertarians do on national security, get lost. We may have trouble winning without you, but if we satisfied you we'd lose more voters than we gain -- and we might just lose our lives, too.
Prior to that I had been one of approximately 1,000 folks who angrily occupied the steps of the Tennessee state capitol and stopped the secretly planned imposition of a state income tax. The Associated Press distributed a photo of me waving a "Don't Tread Upon Me" flag at that tax protest.
I paid my dues.
Some of us go way beyond posting on freerepublic.com
They're a bunch of asshat sickos anyway. Their main rag, the spectacularly misnamed Reason magazine, viciously smears Michelle Malkin and runs interference for our would be Islamic murderers.
But you'll be more than happy to take my vote.
Frigging hypocrite.
but if you disagree as much as some Losertarians do on national security
I'm more of a hawk than say, Lincoln Chafee or Oly Snowe.
but if we satisfied you we'd lose more voters than we gain
Apparently not. The results in this little study say otherwise.
Have fun in the minority. Get back to us when you find your soul. Maybe we can chat again then.
L
I guess I could be "labeled" pro-life, as I'm pretty much opposed to death...
But as to stem cell research, while I'm not necessarily opposed to it, I am opposed to federal ( or state ) funding....
If the medical community wishes to do such research, let them find private funding for it..
So, do you attack Democrats for the same reason, and not because of their beliefs?
Libertarians are not Republicans..
While I often vote for the (R) candidate, I also vote for the (L) candidate, and the (I) candidate as well..
It depends on how well they agree with MY political philosophy..
No One has an obligation to vote for Republicans..
I could probably find some "blue dog" Democrats that are more conservative than some moderate and centrist Republicans..
At least on some issues..
Some of the comments concerning Libertarians on this thread are not making any friends or positively influencing any people..
They are simple alienating the very Libertarians you wish to support the Republican effort..
I expect with that attitude you'll see even less support in the future..
Personally, I would vote Libertarian before I'd vote for McCain.
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