Why “Vote GOP for the Court” Cuts No Ice with Me

I’ve never voted for a Democrat or Republican for president at a general election. I’ve always voted for a Libertarian (in 2008 I voted for George Phillies, who was on the ballot as a Libertarian in New Hampshire in addition to the official candidate, Bob Barr), and I’ve never had reason to regret my vote. [...]

Read Full Post »

An Advantage of Incumbency…

…Making taxpayers foot the bill for your campaign events. Obligatory disclaimer: Republican presidents did this too, I’m sure.

Read Full Post »

Revisiting My Primary Forecasts

My original forecasts for Ron Paul’s primary performances are here. Those forecasts were based simply on the Iowa result, so it was quite possible that there would substantial error, and indeed there has been. Paul significantly overperformed his forecast in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the forecast was dead on in Florida, and then Paul [...]

Read Full Post »

Ron Paul Takes Second in Both New Hampshire Primaries

That’s right; in addition to the 23% of the Republican vote he took, Paul took 4% of the Democratic vote as a write-in candidate, good for second place, according to the NH Secretary of State. (Note: the NH SOS website is down right now, so I’m relying on descriptions of what it says given to [...]

Read Full Post »

Ron Paul Soundly Beating Expectations (updated)

Results are still coming in, and Ron Paul is at 24% with 58% reporting, but it’s not too early to say that my forecast was wrong. When you examine the town-by-town results, the towns that have reported are exactly average for Ron Paul, according to their 2008 results. So I predict Paul will finish with [...]

Read Full Post »

What to Look for in Tonight’s Primary Results

Jon Huntsman is having a mini-surge in New Hampshire, at the expense of Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. While a week ago Paul was routinely breaking the 20% barrier in the polls, he is now down to about 17-18%, a small decline, but when replicated across a number of different polls likely to reflect a [...]

Read Full Post »

More Disappointment from Huntsman

Hit & Run is reporting that Jon Huntsman (audio link) is saying that he would have signed the NDAA, the recent bill authorizing indefinite detention. Couple that with his comments on Iran, and he’s looking more and more like just another Bush Republican.

Read Full Post »

Forecasting Ron Paul’s Remaining Primary Performances

Last night, Ron Paul increased his percentage of the Iowa caucus vote from 10.0% in 2008 to 21.4%. If we can expect this same kind of increase from Paul in the remaining states, what would we expect his performance to be? I have found that Ron Paul’s primary vote shares are best modeled logarithmically, due [...]

Read Full Post »

The Paul Surge, Pt. 2

Ron Paul is still surging. I have an article forthcoming in the next issue of The American Conservative forecasting the New Hampshire primary and the role that participants in the Free State Project and other libertarian activists may play therein. At the time I wrote the article, I made the fairly bold forecast that Paul [...]

Read Full Post »

Paul More Electable than Gingrich? Than Romney??

Ron Paul is a much better general election candidate against Obama than either Gingrich or Romney in Iowa, and in New Hampshire Paul comes fairly close to Romney against Obama. That’s one surprising takeaway from a just-released Marist poll for NBC News of Iowa and New Hampshire voters (pdf here). Marist is a high-quality polling [...]

Read Full Post »

Libertarian Case for Jon Huntsman

New Hampshire activist Eduardo J. Lopez-Reyes has an op-ed in Seacoast Online making the case for Jon Huntsman. (My Pileus post on Huntsman is quoted. Grover Cleveland on Huntsman’s foreign policy here.)

Read Full Post »

The Ron Paul Surge?

Recent polls have Ron Paul at 19% in Iowa (where turnout is traditionally low) and 17% in New Hampshire (where turnout is usually very high). And I found this interesting: Paul’s contact rate with voters is the only one that matches Romney’s, at 52 percent in New Hampshire. The rate at which his campaign is [...]

Read Full Post »

Progressives: Ron Paul Better than Obama, But We Still Wouldn’t Vote for Him

At least, that’s what Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic claims. He reviews criticisms of Paul from Matt Yglesias and Adam Serwer, which basically boil down to: he’s pro-life; he favors enforcing immigration laws; he’s a bit kooky about the importance of the Fed. Friedersdorf then puts the boot in: Wow. They make Ron Paul sound [...]

Read Full Post »

Welcome Summer (Recovery Again Deferred)

How quickly one year has passed. It was only one year ago this June  that the White House blogproclaimed: “This summer is sure to be a Summer of Economic Recovery.” As reported at the time, Vice President Joe Biden marked “the Obama administration’s ‘Recovery Summer,’” with “a six-week-long push designed to highlight the jobs accompanying [...]

Read Full Post »

Huntsman: No-Label Libertarianism?

Mitch Daniels seems to be the potential Republican presidential candidate getting the most attention from libertarians if one excludes the forthrightly libertarian candidates Gary Johnson and Ron Paul. Our own Grover Cleveland has expressed his man-crush here, while Ilya Somin puts the case for Daniels here. But I want to take a look at Jon [...]

Read Full Post »

National Journal on the FSP and NH Primary

I was recently interviewed for a National Journal story, which has just come out, on how the Free State Project may influence the 2012 presidential primary. Pileus also gets a link!

Read Full Post »