Grasping the Libertarian Vote

RALEIGH – I know quite a few Libertarians. But I know many, many more libertarians. That difference between the upper case and the lower case adds up to millions of votes – and lots of misunderstanding.

The Libertarian Party was founded in 1971 by intellectuals and activists espousing several distinguishable but often-allied strands of thought, from Ayn Rand Objectivists and John Locke-style classical liberals to free-market economists of the Austrian and Chicago schools. The party has run presidential candidates ever since. In many states, Libertarians have also made the ballot in other federal, state, and local contests.

These candidates typically receive only a small fraction of the vote. Occasionally, however, they win. Some 200 Libertarians are currently serving in elective office across the country. Somewhat more often, the fraction of votes that Libertarians pull is large enough that, it is argued, they keep Republican candidates from winning close races.

Why is it assumed that most voters who chose Libertarian candidates would otherwise vote Republican? Here’s where the distinction between Libertarian and libertarian comes into play. While truly active membership in the Libertarian Party can be counted in the thousands, and votes cast for Libertarian presidential candidates can be counted in the hundreds of thousands, the number of libertarian voters in the United States is in the tens of millions, according to national polls and analysis by the Cato Institute’s David Boaz and David Kirby.

In a 2006 paper and a 2010 update, Boaz and Kirby employ data from Gallup, The Washington Post, the American National Election Study, and other sources to estimate the size of the libertarian vote. It depends on the source and screen used to define libertarian, but the bloc is somewhere between 10 percent and 25 percent of voters. You get the lower number if you screen tightly for voters consistent in their support for small government in both economics and social policy. You get the larger number if you include voters who express support for low taxes, less regulation, and social toleration most of the time.

Most people who write about politics, including me, employ the Left-Center-Right spectrum for describing political candidates and ideas. It’s a reasonable accommodation of the common vocabulary as long as you remember that these labels describe political coalitions, not pristine ideological categories. So, for example, the Left includes: 1) secular voters in Manhattan who don’t much like the capital-gains tax but detest religious conservatism even more, 2) deeply religious black voters in Mississippi who oppose abortion and gay marriage, and 3) moderates in Missouri who think that giving tax money to big corporations proves they are pro-business.

On the Right, the coalition includes most libertarian voters as well as social conservatives and hawks. On both sides of the spectrum, then, groups of voters who disagree on much nevertheless cohere in organizations, movements, and parties because of shared interests. Sometimes the coalitions are strained by events or explosive controversies. In modern times, though, these coalitions have proved to be remarkably stable.

In electoral politics, the libertarian vote is mostly a Republican constituency (sorry, Libertarians). In recent decades, libertarians have on average split about 70-30 for Republican candidates. But the variations are interesting. Libertarian voters strongly support George W. Bush in 2000, at 72 percent, but by 2004 his libertarian support had dropped to 59 percent – still a clear majority, and obviously not sufficient to tip the outcome, but nevertheless an indicator of libertarian disaffection with his Medicare expansion, the Patriot Act, and other policies.

Something similar happened in the congressional races of 2006. Libertarian voters gave 54 percent support to GOP candidates for the U.S. House that year, down from 73 percent in 2000 and 70 percent in 2002. It’s quite possible that the votes received by Libertarian candidates in the 2006 Senate races in Montana and Missouri cost those Republican incumbents their reelection. As Boaz and Kirby argue, however, the dynamic is far broader than that.

I’m on record opposing North Carolina’s restrictive access laws that make it too costly for Libertarians and other alternative parties to place candidates on the ballot. It’s a matter of constitutional principle and simple fairness. But that doesn’t mean I think third parties are likely to transform politics. Most libertarians will continue to choose between the two major parties – and most Republicans who want to win elections will need to work hard to keep libertarians in their coalition.

It’s hardly an impossible task. There are few Republican politicians more disliked by libertarian intellectuals than John McCain, but he ended up winning 71 percent support among libertarian voters in 2008. They disliked his opponent even more. That’s the nature of coalition politics.

Other than he gets the Ayn Rand part wrong. Recently they have tried to take back the Objectivist mantle, and then they claimed it, however, Rand herself despised these early Libertarians.

For the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I do not join or endorse any political group or movement. More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called “hippies of the right,” who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs.

[Ayn Rand, “Brief Summary,” The Objectivist, September 1971]

Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to “do something.” By “ideological” (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the “libertarian” hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies.

[Ayn Rand, “What Can One Do?” Philosophy: Who Needs It]

Q: What do you think of the Libertarian movement? [FHF: “The Moratorium on Brains,” 1971]

AR: All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies, except that they’re anarchists instead of collectivists. But of course, anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet they want to combine capitalism and anarchism. That is worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies, but don’t want to preach collectivism, because those jobs are already taken. But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. The anarchist is the scum of the intellectual world of the left, which has given them up. So the right picks up another leftist discard. That’s the Libertarian movement.

Q: What do you think of the Libertarian Party? [FHF: “A Nation’s Unity,” 1972]

AR: I’d rather vote for Bob Hope, the Marx Brothers, or Jerry Lewis. I don’t think they’re as funny as Professor Hospers and the Libertarian Party. If, at a time like this, John Hospers takes ten votes away from Nixon (which I doubt he’ll do), it would be a moral crime. I don’t care about Nixon, and I care even less about Hospers. But this is no time to engage in publicity seeking, which all these crank political parties are doing. If you want to spread your ideas, do it through education. But don’t run for President—or even dogcatcher—if you’re going to help McGovern.

Q: What is your position on the Libertarian Party? [FHF: “Censorship: Local and Express,” 1973]

AR: I don’t want to waste too much time on it. It’s a cheap attempt at publicity, which Libertarians won’t get. Today’s events, particularly Watergate, should teach anyone with amateur political notions that they cannot rush into politics in order to get publicity. The issue is so serious today, that to form a new party based in part on half-baked ideas, and in part on borrowed ideas—I won’t say from whom—is irresponsible, and in today’s context, nearly immoral.

Q: Libertarians advocate the politics you advocate. So why are you opposed to the Libertarian Party? [FHF: “Egalitarianism and Inflation,” 1974]

AR:They are not defenders of capitalism. They’re a group of publicity seekers who rush into politics prematurely, because they allegedly want to educate people through a political campaign, which can’t be done. Further, their leadership consists of men of every of persuasion, from religious conservatives to anarchists. Moreover, most of them are my enemies: they spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas. Now, I think it’s a bad beginning for an allegedly pro-capitalist party to start by stealing ideas.

Q: Have you ever heard of [Libertarian presidential candidate] Roger MacBride? [FHF: “?” 1976]

AR: My answer should be, “I haven’t.” There’s nothing to hear. I have been maintaining in everything I have said and written, that the trouble in the world today is philosophical; that only the right philosophy can save us. Now here is a party that plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes it with the exact opposite—with religionists, anarchists, and just about every intellectual misfit and scum they can find—and they call themselves Libertarians, and run for office. I dislike Reagan and Carter; I’m not too enthusiastic about the other candidates. But the worst of them are giants compared to anybody who would attempt something as un-philosophical, low, and pragmatic as the Libertarian Party. It is the last insult to ideas and philosophical consistency.

Q: Do you think Libertarians communicate the ideas of freedom and capitalism effectively? [Q&A following LP’s “Objective Communication,” Lecture 1, 1980]

AR: I don’t think plagiarists are effective. I’ve read nothing by a Libertarian (when I read them, in the early years) that wasn’t my ideas badly mishandled—i.e., had the teeth pulled out of them—with no credit given. I didn’t know whether I should be glad that no credit was given, or disgusted. I felt both. They are perhaps the worst political group today, because they can do the most harm to capitalism, by making it disreputable.

Q: Why don’t you approve of the Libertarians, thousands of whom are loyal readers of your works? [FHF: “The Age of Mediocrity,” 1981]

AR: Because Libertarians are a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people: they plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose, and they denounce me in a more vicious manner than any communist publication, when that fits their purpose. They are lower than any pragmatists, and what they hold against Objectivism is morality. They’d like to have an amoral political program.

Q: The Libertarians are providing intermediate steps toward your goals. Why don’t you support them? [Ibid., 1981]

AR: Please don’t tell me they’re pursuing my goals. I have not asked for, nor do I accept, the help of intellectual cranks. I want philosophically educated people: those who understand ideas, care about ideas, and spread the right ideas. That’s how my philosophy will spread, just as philosophy has throughout all history: by means of people who understand and teach it to others. Further, it should be clear that I do not endorse the filthy slogan, “The end justifies the means.” That was originated by the Jesuits, and accepted enthusiastically by Communists and Nazis. The end does not justify the means; you cannot achieve anything good by evil means. Finally, the Libertarians aren’t worthy of being the means to any end, let alone the end of spreading Objectivism.

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