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
A few years ago, I did a statistical analysis of which states had the most libertarians, using data from 2004 and 2008 Libertarian Party vote shares and 2008 Ron Paul vote shares and contributions. David Boaz has prodded me to update these numbers in light of the 2012 election. This post does just that. To … Continue reading Where the Libertarians Are, Part 2
Edit: The source for the donations data is opensecrets.org; the source for the personal income data is the BEA.
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
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
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??
The latest from Egypt: "I was in Tahrir Square during the 25 January revolution and I saw a lot of injured people, but this time I think there are more serious injuries," says Dr Omar Qassar who is working on makeshift premises. "I've seen two people hit by shotgun pellets in their chest and abdomen. … Continue reading More U.S. Taxpayer-Funded Repression
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
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!
Controlling for everything else, turnout actually does not predict Ron Paul's vote share, but the results demonstrate that Paul did much better in caucuses than primaries and after McCain had clinched. Now that we have estimated the effects of electoral institutions, we can adjust Ron Paul's vote shares in each state accordingly and come up with a prediction of just how "pro-Ron Paul" each state was.
PILEUS 