A Classical Liberal Blog on Political Science, Economics, Philosophy, Law, and More
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. … Continue reading The Changing Political Geography of New Hampshire
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 … Continue reading The Eight Year Mirage
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: … Continue reading Rand Paul at CPAC
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 … Continue reading Why New Hampshire Should Give Its Electors to the National Popular Vote Winner
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" … Continue reading Further Unpacking Ron Paul’s State-by-State 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 … Continue reading Understanding Ron Paul’s 2012 Presidential Primary Performance
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 … Continue reading Democratic Retreat on Civil Liberties
One keeps hearing that the euro crisis could doom Obama's chances for reelection. (Because, after all, that's the reason we should be concerned about the economy: its effects on politics.) I'm not so sure. Voters are hardly well informed, but if the Eurozone goes into deep recession and the U.S. into a mild one, won't … Continue reading Eurozone Crisis & Obama Reelection/Cross-National Economic Voting Bleg
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. … Continue reading Why “Vote GOP for the Court” Cuts No Ice with Me
...Making taxpayers foot the bill for your campaign events. Obligatory disclaimer: Republican presidents did this too, I'm sure.
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 … Continue reading Revisiting My Primary Forecasts
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 … Continue reading Ron Paul Takes Second in Both New Hampshire Primaries
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 … Continue reading Ron Paul Soundly Beating Expectations (updated)
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 … Continue reading What to Look for in Tonight’s Primary Results
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.
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 … Continue reading Forecasting Ron Paul’s Remaining Primary Performances
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 … Continue reading The Paul Surge, Pt. 2
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 … Continue reading Paul More Electable than Gingrich? Than Romney??
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.)
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 … Continue reading The Ron Paul Surge?
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 … Continue reading Progressives: Ron Paul Better than Obama, But We Still Wouldn’t Vote for Him
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 … Continue reading Welcome Summer (Recovery Again Deferred)
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 … Continue reading Huntsman: No-Label Libertarianism?
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!
