Last week, I posted data from the latest Reason-Rupe poll showing 77 percent of libertarians supporting Romney—the highest percentage share of the libertarian vote of any Republican presidential candidate since 1980.
Many commenters on Twitter and Facebook were horrified! Surely, many reasoned, this large vote share is a measure of antipathy for Obama rather than affinity for Romney. Others commented that any libertarian supporting Romney doesn’t deserve to be considered a “true” libertarian.
I wanted to reflect on this last comment. Who should count as a libertarian?
In our Cato research, David Boaz, Emily Ekins and I have taken to using a relatively broad definition of a libertarian. Why? Compared to other political words like “capitalism” or “socialism,” fewer know the word “libertarian.” Many who hold libertarian views call themselves “moderate” or “independent” or even “conservative.” Few polls even offer respondents an option to identify themselves as “libertarian.” Those that do reveal confusion about what the word means.
Given all this, we have preferred to probe respondents’ basic background beliefs about the role of government, using questions commonly asked on national polls. Libertarians give different answers than liberals or conservatives. For instance, in the Reason-Rupe poll, we chose three questions to screen libertarians. This gives us a 20 percent group of libertarian likely voters. Other methods and questions produce slightly higher or lower estimates.
But what if you define libertarians more strictly, say, only libertarians who self-identify as such? Or libertarians who also prioritize civil liberties, like support for the legalization of marijuana? Or libertarian independents? Or tea party libertarians? The chart below breaks out these different segments of the broader libertarian vote.* (Thanks again to Emily Ekins for sharing the crosstabs.)