Talk Elections

The reason why there are this many Democratic Governors is not that they win or run such great campaigns.  It is that the Republicans lose and the Libertarians spoil them.

Look at gubernatorial races in AZ, OR, WI, WY.  In each case, the Democrat pulled under 50% of the vote and the Republican lost by fewer votes than the Libertarian pulled.  Further, some people suggest that Richardson in OK was an anti-tax candidate, and as no official LP candidate ran he got the Libertarian vote.

Not to mention the South Dakota Senate race where Democrat Johnson defeated Republican Thune by under 600 votes but the Libertarian candidate (despite conceding for fear of spoilage!) pulled five times that many votes.

So assuming all or most of the libertarian vote went to the Republican, there would have been four or five more GOP gubernatorial victories in 2002.  How's that for spoiler?

Are you saying that all Libertarians would be Republican over Democrat? I got the idea that they were made up from people of both sides.

I know a libertarian who would vote democratic before voting republican.  I think it all depends on what that particular libertarian's priorities were.  Is he or she more concerned with economics or social issues?

Now to be fair...WI's libertarian was the brother of a popular republican governor...the WY Republican was in trouble because of corruption or some anti-rancher policy...Arizona's republican was too closely linked to Qwest.

Don't call the libertarian a spoiler when they're usually not.

Besides...a libertarian this time could spoil my vote for Kerry...not Bush.

It's more or less accepted that libertarians tend to vote GOP more than Democrats, and that Libertarians spoil GOP candidates.  Libertarians themselves often spread this idea.

The libertarian strategy is to spoil the incumbent in at least a couple states.  They're shooting for a very easy target, and in NH they could very likely get it, not to mention Florida, Wisconsin, Nevada, etc.


Thompson ran on a libertarian platform and was pretty famous (for state politics) in his own right.  Regardless, if he was popular for a connection to the GOP then that's only going to connect him to GOP voters and distance him from Dem voters.  There were other issues at stake in WY and AZ, but then I didn't say the Libertarians singlehandedly did the job, I said the GOPers lost.  If the Republicans handled their stuff, the LP couldn't spoil them - they'd be able to break fifty percent.  They don't, and spoilers to the LP throw the election to punish the arrogant or misguided GOPer.



Regardless, you all have to admit there is a strong track record just in 2002 for the Libertarians to control the balance of the vote, and if one party or the other made a move to include or appeal to the Libertarians, rather than arrogantly arguing that the Libertarians should support them without any concensiions, then they could make a strong move for elections.  Holding LPers in a tight race is a big boon.  These five races just from 2002 should show that.

Now imagine how many Libertarians actually did vote Republican or Democrat.  If you had one of the parties try to become the home of the libertarians, you'd see a lot more movement in this area than just what the statistics show.  There are plenty of hidden libertarians voting for the two main parties, and they are effectively independent voters.  They will move if a party and candidate play to them honestly and openly.

There's a big pick-up here, and Bush and Kerry are going to lose access to it because they're playing for the bigger war, more welfare, restrict civil liberties crowd instead of the libertarians.

...and a third party cost the Dems in Minnesota

Nader, debatable, only changed the outcome in 2 states, New Hampshire and Florida...and that was with 3 million votes...

The LP will be hard pressed to do the same with only 400,000 votes.

And they won't be drawing them from one side like Nader did either.

the LP will be a spoiler when pigs fly by my window.

But they already did in a half dozen elections in 2002 alone.

It only takes that in Florida to have a major chance to throw the whole game.

It wasn't really a 3rd party, it was 2 Dems running in the general rather than in the primary.

Hey RWN, what do you score on the WPSQ and political compass?