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View Full Version : Bob Barr could get as many as 18-24 million votes!




Alex Libman
05-29-2008, 03:46 PM
From David Boaz (http://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz/) on CATO@LIBERTY blog -- Libertarian Voters and the Libertarian Party (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/05/23/libertarian-voters-and-the-libertarian-party/) --


The Libertarian Party is meeting in Denver to nominate a presidential candidate. Vying for the nomination are a former Democratic senator, a former Republican congressman, the author of the book Millionaire Republican, and a number of long-time party activists.

The party's most successful presidential candidate was Ed Clark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Clark), who got 921,000 votes, about 1.1 percent, in 1980. Since then LP candidates (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89499083) have hovered around 400,000 votes.

Ron Paul's surprising campaign this year and the increasing evidence about libertarian voters have generated more interest in the Libertarian Party nomination than usual, as witness the large and broad field of candidates.

So what's the relationship between libertarian voters and the Libertarian Party? First, of course, members of the Libertarian Party are much more committed to the libertarian philosophy than are the libertarian-leaning voters David Kirby and I have identified in recent research. Our research (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6715) indicates that 15 to 20 percent of American voters hold broadly libertarian views, yet the Libertarian Party has only once broken 1 percent in a presidential race. (More people have voted for LP candidates for lesser offices. The LP's website (http://www.lp.org/organization/history.shtml) claims that Libertarian candidates won 5.4 million votes in 1996.)

Libertarian voters have been more willing than other voters to vote for third-party candidates. In Beyond Liberal and Conservative (http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Liberal-Conservative-Reassessing-Political/dp/093279047X), William S. Maddox and Stuart A. Lilie found that libertarians gave 17 percent of their votes to "other" candidates in 1980, presumably independent John B. Anderson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Anderson) and Libertarian Clark, though Clark and Anderson received only about 8 percent of the national total. In 1992 libertarians gave Ross Perot 33 percent, knocking George H. W. Bush from 74 percent of the libertarian vote in 1988 to 35 percent in 1992. Again in 1996, libertarians voted more heavily for Perot (13 percent) than did the national electorate (8 percent). So libertarian-leaning voters seem open to voting for third-party candidates, and thus they should be fertile ground for the Libertarian Party.

I always wondered if most votes for Libertarian candidates were really just "none of the above" votes, cast not by libertarians or even libertarian leaners but just by disgruntled or flippant voters. Some evidence from our Zogby survey in 2006 suggests otherwise. David Kirby and I discussed some of the results from that survey in Cato Policy Report [PDF] (http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v29n1/cpr29n1-1.pdf) in January 2007.

We had previously used three questions from the American National Election Studies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_National_Election_Studies) polls to define "libertarian voters." The week of the 2006 election we commissioned Zogby International (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zogby) to ask the same three questions to 1,012 actual (reported) voters in the election. Once again, we found that 15 percent of them could be defined as libertarian. But only 9 percent of those voters identified themselves as libertarian; most called themselves moderate or conservative.

In previously unpublished results, Zogby asked the same questions to a much larger Internet sample. In that panel, 17.6 percent of the libertarians identified themselves as such. And 8.6 percent identified themselves as supporters of the Libertarian Party.

My "none of the above hypothesis" seemed to be disproved by results from an over-sample in Arizona. There, 15 percent of our Internet sample gave libertarian answers to our three questions. And of those, 7 percent said they had voted for the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, and 23 percent had voted for the Libertarian candidate for governor. Of the total sample, 57 percent of the votes for the Libertarian Senate candidate came from libertarian voters, and 68 percent of the votes for the Libertarian candidate for governor came from libertarians. So in fact it appears, in the one case for which we have evidence, that most people who vote for Libertarian Party candidates in fact hold libertarian views.

So the challenge for this year's Libertarian nominee is this: There's widespread disillusionment with both parties. Ron Paul tapped into some of that in the Republican primaries and demonstrated that a libertarian candidate could raise a lot of money. Some 15 to 20 percent of the voters -- 18 million to 24 million voters in 2004 -- hold libertarian views. Those libertarian voters have previously demonstrated their willingness to vote for third-party candidates. In 2006, they swung sharply away from Republican candidates, yet the leading Democrats aren't offering much to libertarian-minded voters. Perhaps most strikingly, 44 percent of voters said yes to Zogby's question, "Would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, also known as libertarian?" So there would seem to be a huge potential audience for a Libertarian candidate who could raise money, get media attention, create online buzz, and present a compelling and articulate case for peace, freedom, and limited government.


[PLEASE DIGG (http://digg.com/political_opinion/Libertarian_Voters_and_the_Libertarian_Party)]



(Also check out the Cato Institute Daily Podcast #567 (http://www.cato.org/dailypodcast/podcast-archive.php?podcast_id=567) which covers this.)


Now, we all know that most of those 18-24 million libertarians wouldn't be converted in one election, but the Libertarian Party has plenty of room for growth, and thanks to the Ron Paul movement and the nomination of a more pragmatic candidate Bob Barr, this could be a VERY good year for the LP! ;)

Truth Warrior
05-29-2008, 03:47 PM
Is that enough votes to win?

yongrel
05-29-2008, 03:51 PM
Not happening.

crazyfingers
05-29-2008, 03:51 PM
If they ran Hillary they could win it

Fields
05-29-2008, 04:14 PM
If they ran Hillary they could win it

I bet you'd vote for that over barr. :rolleyes:

WRellim
05-29-2008, 04:17 PM
Ummm you made a spelling error in your title.

"thousand" is spelled t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d.

CurtisLow
05-29-2008, 04:59 PM
Scary thing is if Hillary drops, her supporters will vote for McWar because them being anti-Obama

They should all vote 3ed party. Yes, I read other forums to see whats up.....


http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/showthread.php?t=12462

Perry
05-29-2008, 05:19 PM
Daydreamer.

AmericaFyeah92
05-29-2008, 07:27 PM
why are you guys so quick to accept failure?

"if you think you're gona lose, you're probably right..."

OptionsTrader
05-29-2008, 07:31 PM
I will take the under for $50,000.

RideTheDirt
05-29-2008, 08:27 PM
122,267,553 people voted in 2004, 15 mil aint winnin SHIT (and 15 mil sounds very generous, that probably includes Ron Paul people which a lot won't vote for mr cia)

Perry
05-29-2008, 08:54 PM
Well...Barr just isn't the right man anyway.

Don Wills
05-29-2008, 10:19 PM
Well...Barr just isn't the right man anyway.

I've been waiting for the right man for 30 years. He happened once in my
adult life. His name is Ron Paul. I'll be dead before another one like him
comes along. So I'm going to consider voting for Bob Barr, who I will agree
is a flawed candidate, but who is much better than McCain or Obama. And
no I won't vote for Baldwin - theocrats are automatically disqualified from
my consideration.

"The perfect is the enemy of the good." Voltaire

Alex Libman
05-29-2008, 11:24 PM
I did say "as many" - that's the pool of voters who score "libertarian" on the Nolan Chart test, most of whom lean republican. If Bob Barr could get 10% of them in this election, it would be by far the biggest victory the LP has ever had! If he can get 50% of them, the Republican party as we know it will be destroyed! All this would set the LP up for growth in 2012, 2016, and beyond!

Southron
05-30-2008, 10:25 AM
A good showing by the Libertarian Party this year is about the best message that could be sent to the Republicans. At this point, when Obama beats McCain, the media is going to push it as all about the Democrats. But if the LP candidate ends up being the spoiler, they won't be able to ignore it.

Right now the Republican party doesn't think it needs the libertarian vote. Time to prove them wrong.

Aratus
05-30-2008, 10:29 AM
even though evidently the CP is on half the ballots, the aggragate vote for nader, barr and baldwin is indeed a message...this year.

WRellim
05-30-2008, 10:33 AM
He'll be lucky if he even reaches 250,000 votes.

Seriously, Barr will basically END the ballot access and whatever "life" the Libertarian party has.

Local people who USED to vote "L" as a protest see no point in doing so for Barr, regardless of the label they slap on him.

A bottle full of vinegar still stinks the same, even if you color it and put it in something labeled "Evian."

Oh, and if Barr's "media" so far is any indicator, all that media exposure will do is show that the "L" party candidate is nothing but (yet another) neo-con waffler who cannot (will not) provide clear answers to questions.

SAD, but alas true.

werdd
05-30-2008, 04:40 PM
He'll be lucky if he even reaches 250,000 votes.

Seriously, Barr will basically END the ballot access and whatever "life" the Libertarian party has.

Local people who USED to vote "L" as a protest see no point in doing so for Barr, regardless of the label they slap on him.

A bottle full of vinegar still stinks the same, even if you color it and put it in something labeled "Evian."

Oh, and if Barr's "media" so far is any indicator, all that media exposure will do is show that the "L" party candidate is nothing but (yet another) neo-con waffler who cannot (will not) provide clear answers to questions.

SAD, but alas true.


Ill bet you right here and now barr will receive more votes than any LP canidate in history. The message is more important than the man carrying it, and barr has a generally good message. Read the manifesto, and vote barr.

Truth Warrior
05-30-2008, 05:01 PM
"The perfect is the enemy of the good." Voltaire
The good enough is also the enemy of the good. Just a thought.

Truth Warrior
05-30-2008, 05:04 PM
A good showing by the Libertarian Party this year is about the best message that could be sent to the Republicans. At this point, when Obama beats McCain, the media is going to push it as all about the Democrats. But if the LP candidate ends up being the spoiler, they won't be able to ignore it.

Right now the Republican party doesn't think it needs the libertarian vote. Time to prove them wrong.
The GOP and the MSM will blame it on the LP. Like the Dems and the MSM blamed Nader. :rolleyes:

dvdrink
05-30-2008, 05:06 PM
I will be voting for the flawed candidate Bob Barr rather than waiting to cast my vote only for the "perfect" candidate.