The Changing Political Geography of New Hampshire

Now that the 2016 election results are available by town for New Hampshire, I thought I would take a look at where libertarian candidates tended to do well or poorly, and how that pattern compared with conservative versus progressive support by town. To measure libertarian voting by town, I used different variables in different years. …

The Eight Year Mirage

The search for a legacy always begins in earnest as presidents approach the final years of their time in office. Josh Kraushaar (National Journal) has an interesting piece on the Obama legacy. A key passage: By ignoring the electorate and steering the country in an unmistakably progressive direction his final two years in office, he's …

Rand Paul at CPAC

The media has covered Paul’s CPAC address by playing a simple sound byte: “The GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered. I don’t think we need to name any names here, do we?”  Yes, that is in the speech, but there is much more. You can read the full transcript here. A few selections: …

Why New Hampshire Should Give Its Electors to the National Popular Vote Winner

New Hampshire's status as a swing state has had several negative consequences for its residents: Its politics have been nationalized, and so the national political mood determines the partisan composition of the winning state legislative candidates. Its residents have to put up with avalanches of political advertising and campaigning by national candidates. There are controversies …

Further Unpacking Ron Paul’s State-by-State Performance

Per commenter FreeDem's request, here are some other ways to interpret Ron Paul's primary performances in each state, building on the statistical models estimated here. The first exercise is to simulate what Paul's percentage of the vote would have been in each state had they all voted at the same time with the same "institutions" …

Understanding Ron Paul’s 2012 Presidential Primary Performance

After the 2008 primary season, I analyzed Ron Paul's performance in each state to see how institutional factors such as caucus and primary form affected his electoral success. This exercise turned out to be useful for estimating the size of the pro-liberty electorate in each state. In this post, I do the same with the …

Democratic Retreat on Civil Liberties

At Mother Jones, Adam Serwer details the Democratic Party's platform's ratification of the Obama Administration's wholesale retreat on civil liberties. When stacking this sort of thing alongside the GOP's attempt to become the Defenders of Medicare, I not only find it difficult to care who wins the next presidential election, but to understand why anyone …