Topic: Election 2008
Bob Barr, the Best Libertarian Candidate Ever Bob Barr is on track to fulfill Ron Paul's prediction that he will be the most successful Libertarian candidate ever.by Bradley Jansen
(libertarian)
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Bob Barr, the Best Libertarian Candidate Ever
Ron Paul told CNSNews.com that he believed Bob Barr will get more votes than any other Libertarian Party nominee. As it stands now, Dr. Paul is likely right. After polling in the mid-single digits nationally over the summer and sometimes hitting at or near double digits in some state polls, Barr's support has ebbed since public attention turned to the major party national conventions and the vice presidential picks. According to USElectionAtlas.org, Ed Clark set the Libertarian Party record in 1980 when he received 921,299 popular votes for 1.1% of the total votes cast. Dr. Paul himself in 1988 and Harry Browne in 1996 were the other significant races. There is some indication Barr's support has leveled off and perhaps begun to climb again with dissatisfaction over the economy. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should point out that I am a Barr presidential elector candidate to the electoral college but that I endeavored to make an objective analysis here.
Some sites that aggregate the national polls that include Barr include RealClearPolitics.com which put Barr's national support at 1.3% by averaging the most recent six distinct polls. I calculated the Pollster.com average using the same methodology, and the Libertarian nominee gets 1.8% of the national vote. The USAElectionPolls.com site gives Barr a national average 2.3% of the state polls listing him. Those three figures averaged together comes to 1.8% of the vote. Given that the Pollster.com average includes the Zogby internet outlier giving Barr 4% of the vote and that the USAElectionPolls are skewed to incorporate only states where pollsters choose to include Barr believing he has some statistically significant support, I would guess that Barr's true national support now to be closer to around 1.5% of the vote but inching upwards again. While down from the hopeful highs earlier this year, the numbers would still indicate record Libertarian support.
Who is the typical supporter of Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate? Several of the polls give crosstab information to answer that question. As far as gender breakdown, Barr polls better with men than women (3% of the male vote in the DailyKos.com (D)/Research 2000 daily tracking polls and 2% of men in the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, but he polls only 1% of the female vote in both polls). Ideologically, Barr gets 1% of the liberal vote and 2% of the moderates and conservates (LA Times). Politically, the LP is picking up no measurable Democratic support, but 2% of the Republican vote in both the Daily Kos and LA Times polls but either 2% (LA Times) or 4% (Daily Kos) of the independent vote and 3% of "other/refused" (Daily Kos). Racially, Barr gets either 2% (LA Times) or 3% of the white vote but no other measurable support from other groups (Daily Kos). Regarding age demographics, Daily Kos measures no statistically significant support for Barr among 18-29 year olds, 4% among 30-44 year olds, and 1% among those over age 45. Geographically, while Barr's support is evenly distributed at 2% in every region of the country in the Daily Kos poll, it varies more dramatically in the state polls by region compiled by USAElectionPolls.com with Barr getting 2.1% in the Midwestern States, 2.5% of the Western vote, 3% in his native South and 3.5% in the Northeastern states. According to the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, Barr's support is at 2% among both likely and registered voters indicating firm support.
According to the last official fiing FEC P80005580, Barr had raised $859,423 by the end of August. However the LP nominee's website shows that Barr raised over $1 million as of September 26th, as reported in Ballot Access News.
The 2004 Libertarian Party nominee Michael Badnarik got 397,265 of the 122,293,548 total votes cast for president for 0.32% of the nationwide total. According to Richard Winger of Ballot Access News, assuming Barr does get on in Connecticut, but assuming he does not get on in Maine, his name will be before 95.8% of the voters (the number of states will depend on the outcome of court disputes). So with my back of the envelope prognostication of Barr getting 1.5% if the election were held today, and if voter turnout is held constant from 2004, then Barr will get a record LP vote of 1,757,358 votes in November. Either of these numbers would make Bob Barr the most successful Libertarian candidate in terms of percentage and total votes received.
[n.b. This is the last of my series on vote projects as of the end of September polling figures for McKinney, Baldwin, Nader and now Barr. Since then, Barr's numbers have increased.]
J. Bradley Jansen was a legislative staffer for U.S. Congressman Ron Paul from 1997-2001. He is director of the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights of the Liberty and Privacy Network (but views expressed here are his own), which is part of Bob Barr's Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances.
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Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2008-10-08 04:32:36
Barr is the best Libertarian candidate for President ever? Surely, you must be joking! A man who while in Congress voted for the Patriot Act (which he apparently still supports), the War in Iraq, and a bunch of other anti-liberty stuff cannot possibly be considered a better Libertarian candidate for President than Michael Badnarik, Harry Browne, Andre Marrou, Ron Paul, or David Bergland.
Now, if you'd argued that Barr was the worst Libertarian Presidential candidate ever, you could have made a decent case. But the best ever? Get real!
Posted By: Bradley in DC
Date: 2008-10-08 05:37:09
Walt,
"Best" (for the purposes of this column, same as with the Baldwin, Nader and McKinney in this series) was on popularity and votes. There is no analysis here on issues.
Though you may want to read my American Spectator column about Barr regarding the USA PATRIOT Act. And, to put the criticisms of Barr in the proper perspective, as an LP candidate, he's not committed all of the alleged sins. Even then, Dr. Paul himself lobbied Barr personally to run.
Barr will surely help The Libertarian Party achieve in some states automatic ballot access next election and thus have done a great service to The Libertarian Party, but as Walt Thiessen says he is not the Best. Gotta be careful in the use of words although I know what you meant. It is imperative we urge people to vote for Bob Barr as this will open the stage for another Libertarian next time around.
Great title! Misleading title for sure, but great title! Bob Barr is a tough sell those days and so I cannot blame you. That reminds me all those articles on the nolanchart a while ago about the world buzzing that Ron Paul would endorse Bob Barr soon.
Ok, I am sending more money to mises.org; this is the right conclusion to this "Bob Barr" political adventure. Great, great idea!
Barr should and will be judged not by whether he does better than others but by the standard he set himself, along with leaders of the Libertarian Reform Caucus, Bill Redpath, right-wing publicists like Eric Dondero, and Barr's staffers and supporters in the delegations, to gain the LP nomination.
That standard was that he would get 5 million votes and raise 5 million dollars, and bring new professional support of the LP.
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be happening. Instead they're saying in his campaign that they didn't really mean what they said, and there are growing worries that the campaign and allies such as M. Carling and others are not only not co-operating with the LP locals, but his partisans have been sniping and attacking top activists. People are saying this is accelerating the stampede of Libertarians already in public office out the doors when the LRC took over in Portland. Plus people say his partisansy began looting the LP and harrassing top activists along with their Boston Tea Party allies.
When I called one of them on it, he pointed to statemets by Stephen Gordon at his old website and Crowley over at LRC and said, "But we said we believe Libertarian politicians should be liars, didn't we?" He continued that they were just 'hinting' and 'spinning' to 'attack the extreme freedom lovers' and if people believed them, that's their problem. No wonder they want to get rid of the Libertarian Statement of Principles.
Barr seems to be keeping aloof of these shenanigans but in the end it will be did he get the 5 million votes and raise the 5 million bucks? I hope so, and that we don't see more of this CYA and finger pointing mode, and he does get the votes.
Posted By: Bradley in DC
Date: 2008-10-08 11:20:54
Yes, I intended the title to be provocative (which seems to have worked). In the context of the column (and the analyses of the other minor party campaigns), "best" refers to electoral success. The purpose of political parties is to win elections.
There are, of course, other subjective ways of measuring what is "best" which are, well, subjective.
I'll summarize the race tomorrow and add my observations.
Posted By: Eric Sundwall
Date: 2008-10-08 13:09:30
Mr. B in DC,
The purpose of a third party is not necessarily to win elections. As many who would drive certain processes and results within said third party, often use this mantra to bludgeon opponents and coax sympathizers, it becomes simply a pernicious catch phrase that hampers other 'purposes' of political parties and frequently wastes vital resources for the real effort.
Given the horrible context (single plurality districts, gerrymandered districts, media blackouts, ballot access restrictions, either/or -lesser of two evil psychology) of two hyper bloated and dominant parties, it is a small miracle that other parties even form and attempt to influence the process.
In NY, a fusion system exists which allows parties to piggy back their members on the more than likely prominent candidate from the two main players. Thus, parties exist and they 'win', but not in the context that you may have promulgated. The Working Families Party assures 'progressive' influences in Democratic regime catering and the Conservatives hold the GOP inline with a 'pro-life' agenda.
As the LPNY prefers to run it's own candidates, they are often criticized for not going along to get along. Our purpose, is to drive issues. The Drug War and a host of other victimless crimes are off the table for those who need a safe collective for their health and well being. Jumping outside those safety zones is not prudent for most politicos. If ardent individualists can't stand up and resist via the political process, who will ? Certainly not sucessful think tanks and the like.
While this might not seem practical or worthwhile to some, those who do choose to try, should not be chastised for doing so. When a group forms based on voluntary means based on an idea or ideology, there is no guarantee of success. The integrity and cohesive bonds of that association ought to be sufficient propagate the message. Simple survival and continuance is often enough. Smelling and drinking the blood of victory is not the only organizational sustenance.
As long as its occasional electoral influence without a wholesale purpose always defined as winning is acceptable, the only thing that matters is a satisfied membership.
I wish Mr. Barr luck in a few weeks and hope that our totals climb a bit. But I am concerned about many aspects of alienation to the active membership that may have occurred in the process. If higher vote totals in an impossible fight damage the latter, then purpose may indeed become a fundamental issue.
As a diehard, uncompromising Libertarian (believe me, I've been called worse in these pages), I cannot conscience how a neocon sycophant like Barr ever made it past the LP front door, and here we are being asked to support his candidacy on a platform he doesn't even subscribe to? As long as I live, I will never understand how this could possibly have happened in (what used to be) the Party of Principle. If all it took to gain the Libertarian Party nomination was to promise 5 million dollars and five million votes, the very thought leaves me lost for words. All I have seen from Bob Barr is a lot of wishy-washy compromise crap. I want a candidate who understands the meaning of the words "Constitutional Government" and I won't support anything less. Best Libertarian candidate my ass!
Posted By: Mike Linksvayer
Date: 2008-10-08 19:01:41
The market says Barr's chances are basically unchanged since late August -- currently a 40% chance of obtaining 1% or more of the vote.
See comments by me on http://www.nolanchart.com/article4605.html for details and http://gondwanaland.com/tmp/2008-08-30-barr-intrade-avg-vote.ods for an updated spreadsheet.
Second best candidate, the best one was in 1988, though the second best one may get more votes than the best one, mostly due to the campaign of the best one, e.g. a wave on which he can ride. But apart from his past mistakes and mistakes during his current campaign, Barr does bring some gravitas and professionalism. According to CNN he is polling at 2%, same as Nader. Just a pity he does not have a different VP candidate, someone like Dr. Karen Kwiatkowski would have been excellent. Of course he could also do better if he managed to raise say 5 m USD. The Palin factor may have takes some potential votes away, but this is also diminishing and the govt. bailout and dissatisfaction with the economy should give Barr, Baldwin and Nader a boost.
Posted By: David F. Nolan
Date: 2008-10-11 19:02:43
If by "best" you mean "strongest" then Barr will probably win that title. I think he's likely to get more votes than Clark received, but only because the vote total this year will be about 135 million vs. 85 million in 1980. In percentage terms, I expect Barr will be our second-strongest candidate, behind Clark.
However, vote totals are only one measure of performance. The highest vote total ever received by an LP gubernatorial candidate in California was received by a certified lunatic who spat on a talk show host during an interview. But nearly 10% of the voters voted for third-party andidates that year, so our lunatic got a record vote.
Posted By: David K. Meller
Date: 2008-10-14 10:06:11
A thoughtful, well researched article. Predictions are premature, and a lot can happen between now and election day, especially with a serious economic readjustment underway. The fact that this was predicted by Misesians, including libertarians certainly is a point in our favor.
It is still worthwhile to hope for the best, but to commit oneself for a long-term effort on behalf of liberty, in political, media, and educational centers of activity whether Bob Barr (or Chuck Baldwin) do outstandingly well in this election or not.
It is not impossible that vote fraud will be employed--especially if Libertarians do well--to obscure Barr's true vote totals.
The REAL efforts will begin AFTER election day. Certainly either Obama (very likely) or McCain as President will pose serious dangers to what is left of either our liberty or our prosperity!
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