Libertarian Public Opinion Project

Will you share the results?

I've taken it.

I will post the results over at Notes On Liberty. Expect that in mid-January.

I emphasize that this survey is very much a 'pilot' and I would discourage taking the results to be generalized to the libertarian population at large. The point of the above survey is to get an idea of what special considerations need to be taken for surveys aimed at self-identified libertarians. For example, looking over the results thus far it is clear that I will need to lump together non-whites into one category since there just aren't enough Hispanics, Blacks, Asians etc. to use them for most statistical analysis.

Thanks for everyone who has taken the survey. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Took the survey. Not too difficult to answer, didn't take a lot of time, so that was good.

Didn't offer rationale into why people would think a certain way on a couple of issues, so not sure if that could promote a false narrative, couple of things I noted below:

-If the US should withdraw from NAFTA.
I voted yes, only because it's a bastardized version of "free trade". Free trade doesn't need government agreements, free trade is the absence of government intervention. Below quote from internet on NAFTA:
"A real free trade agreement (if Americans really thought it were necessary) could be written in a couple of sentences. The monstrous NAFTA runs over 1,000 pages and is loaded with cronyism, regulations, production codes, and government bureaucracy that prohibits free trade."
*I do see there is a later question asking if the US should engage in free trade, and I voted yes -- so I suppose that information could be extrapolated.

-If all adults should be able to vote. Not sure what intended data is supposed to be extrapolated from this.
I voted no, but this isn't a traditional "felons should lose the right to vote." On the contrary, we have a penal system with the idea that you are sentenced and serve your debt to society. You should have your rights restored. If there's concerns that people haven't paid a debt to society, haven't been rehabilitated/whatever, maybe the penal system should be reformed.
With that said, I don't think people on social welfare programs should be able to vote. You're supporting yourself with someone else's money, and there is the conflict of interest that you're likely going to vote in your own best interest (of continuing to receive welfare money from welfare programs.) They're providing you with a way to live, and you get to vote just as much as they do on if they have to keep giving you money. That's using the coercive force of government to take money from another person. That's stealing, and it doesn't have a place.

-Climate change I stayed neutral on, but I don't want more government agreements.
I'll be damned if I believe all the propaganda coming from government media outlets and mouthpieces. So, there isn't a free exchange of information to be able to make an informed decision, I couldn't tell you if global warming was a thing or not.
With that said, what makes people think that government can fix this problem? The areas where I've seen government intervention I've seen more problems introduced. Incandescent light-bulbs were regulated out of existence to my knowledge, with many of them being replaced by CFLs. Are CFLs safe/better for the environment? Probably not. They contain mercury that needs special disposal. I know plenty of people who don't specially dispose of them, that's an environment hazard; when do we get to clean that up? Also, all this mining/extraction of these rare metals to make things like solar panels at an artificial rate due to government intervention, when can we count on goverment to fix that environmental hazard it created?

More personal observation at this point, but a lot of these liberals are the contributors to the problem. They love the big cities that are deforested and have environmental health concerns. But even more so, they love bottled water, and I hate bottled water. It drives me insane to think how much environmental damage is being caused by bottling water and shipping it who knows how many miles. You have to create endless amounts of plastic that people keep talking about being so horrible, and then you have to ship these ridiculous amounts of water. Has anyone ever stopped to think the environmental impact of that, the fuels these trucks are burning to ship water you could get from your faucet? Then the wear and tear of those industrial car components that have environmentally unfriendly engineering, and the extra traffic congestion and subsequent waste of additional fuel and car components...it goes on.

But are they going to sacrifice to make the environment a better place? No. They're gonna do what they want to do, and have rights of others restricted because of a holier-than-thou attitude. Just real ironic. Government is so great, but you can't trust them to get faucet water correct, eh?

Answered. Bump this thread with the results

Originally Posted by Michelangelo

I am a poli sci graduate student over in California. At the moment I'm working towards creating a 'libertarian public opinion' project. My goal is to better understand the policy preferences of self-identified libertarians and other like-minded individuals. While I think libertarian policy is unified in many policy areas, I do think there are areas where there is still much debate within the movement and I am interested in what is driving these differences. For example the LP platform has traditionally been pro-choice on the abortion issue, but you have notable figures like Ron Paul who are pro-life.

At the moment I am playing around with a pilot version of a foreign policy quiz. If you have 10-15 minutes to spare I would appreciate it if you guys would take it. It can be found here.

Emphasis on it being a 'pilot'. I am still working on the word choice and what questions to add/remove. If you have any feedback on the survey design feel free to contact me via PM.

Thank you for your time and happy holidays everyone.

I answered it. It was surprisingly quick and painless. I noticed there was no abortion question which is surprising because you gave that as an example of libertarian differences. Also there was no position on marriage. (traditional marriage; traditional marriage + gay marriage; traditional marriage + gay marriage + polygamy; traditional marriage + gay marriage + polygamy + polyamory; get the government out of marriage altogether, scrap the income tax and handle everything else through contract). One thing that I think differentiates libertarian thinking from democrat / republican thinking is that libertarians are principles driven whereas democrats and republicans are policy driven.

Originally Posted by jmdrake

I noticed there was noticed there was no abortion question which is surprising because you gave that as an example of libertarian differences. Also there was no position on marriage.

Originally Posted by Michelangelo

At the moment I am playing around with a pilot version of a foreign policy quiz.

//

Originally Posted by otherone

//

Oops...my bad. Of course in a round about way everything these days is "foreign policy." Environmentalism should be domestic policy but people are doing climate change treaties. Trump said he might put questions about gay rights on his "immigration screening" quiz. And before someone says "I don't gays thrown off buildings either", I don't want anyone thrown off buildings. A "Do you agree that nobody should be killed or punished merely for violating some tenant of your religion" question would cover everything.

Question that I didn't find a 'perfect' answer for:

'If Afghanistan is attacked by Russia should US allow refugees from Afg into the US?'

my answer would be: Yes, they should allow it but not support it.

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The following could be applied to the above question too... several questions ask should the US unilaterally do something (remove all trade barriers, adopt an open borders migration policy). Having answered above in the survey that I think the US should break up into several states it is obvious I don't want the US (assuming this means federal government) to do anything. But I do think the individual states should remove all trade barriers and adopt open borders migration policies.

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'War should be avoided unless the US is under direct attack' on a slider scale

I strongly agree with this if we are talking about the states going to war, but if instead we are talking about an individual/group who wants to go fight a foreign war to defend the people of another country I find that honorable and would strongly disagree with the statement.

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I had no problems taking the survey on my phone, it formatted well and looked nice.

Completed!

Questions need lots of work. Most are too vague, crucial terms left undefined. For example, is "free trade" just that or is it the political jargon?

@Abortion/Marriage

I will eventually aim to create a survey about cultural beliefs. At this point I am focusing on foreign policy so that I can experiment on my approach without asking you all to take a long survey.

@Self-identified libertarians

Yes, one of the troubles with working with 'libertarians' is that it is hard to define them. Part of my motivation for this project is that, from what I have read, much public opinion research lumps libertarians in with Tea Parties, the alt-right, white nationalists, etc. Basically we are treated as part of the non-mainstream right. So while this approach isn't ideal I think it is an improvement over existing methods.

I eventually hope to target non-American libertarians. That will be fun trying to sort them out! /sarcasm

@Wording

Some of the questions (the free trade one) are purposefully vague. I will expand on a few of them though. From talking to people it seems many want an option to allow in refugees, but not extend welfare benefits to them. I'll see if I can add onto the environmental/climate change section too. In retrospect I should have added something on fisheries/resource management in international waters. If anyone has any suggestions or question that they felt needed better clarification feel free to post/PM. I am more than receptive to feedback on that.


Thank you all for the feedback and taking the survey. I will be sure to update this thread when I finish gathering results.

https://notesonliberty.com/2017/01/0...s-preliminary/

And preliminary results are up. I still have a lot of data cleaning to do, so take it all with a grain of salt.