In 2010 I blogged about which states have the strongest libertarian constituencies, using some data from political scientist Jason Sorens, founder of the Free State Project, and also 1980 Libertarian Party results from Bill Westmiller. That column can be found here, complete with graphics.
Now Sorens has updated his results with 2012 data added to 2004 and 2008. As he notes, the results are fairly similar. You still find the most libertarians in the rugged individualist states of the mountain West plus New Hampshire. The mountain states were also best for Ed Clark, the Libertarian nominee back in 1980. As I noted previously, New Hampshire was in the bottom 10 for Clark, but near the top in Sorens’s ranking in 2010 and a bit higher this time. I’m not really sure what caused the change.
Sorens notes that “Vermont, Maine, Kentucky, and Texas have gained, while Michigan, Idaho, Indiana, and Georgia have fallen” in the later calculations. I pointed out previously that Kentucky, my home state, was dead last for the Libertarian candidate in 1980. And it didn’t do very well in Sorens’s 2010 ranking either. Since June 2010, of course, Kentucky has elected the most libertarian member of the Senate, Rand Paul, and one of the most libertarian House members, Thomas Massie. So it’s about time the state’s voters started moving up the libertarian rankings, albeit only slightly.
Here’s Sorens’s latest ranking:
state libertarians
Montana 5.504036
New Hampshire 4.163368
Alaska 3.586032
New Mexico 3.319092
Idaho 2.842685
Nevada 2.477748
Texas 1.632528
Washington 1.568113
Oregon 1.180586
Arizona 1.0411
North Dakota 0.7316829
Indiana 0.6056806
California 0.5187439
Vermont 0.4731389
Utah 0.2056809
Colorado 0.1532149
Kansas 0.107657
South Dakota 0.0328709
Maine ‑0.0850015
Pennsylvania ‑0.2063729
Iowa ‑0.3226413
Georgia ‑0.3296589
Virginia ‑0.3893113
Maryland ‑0.4288172
Rhode Island ‑0.470931
Tennessee ‑0.4882021
Missouri ‑0.4912609
Arkansas ‑0.5384682
Louisiana ‑0.5897537
Nebraska ‑0.6350928
Minnesota ‑0.7662109
Michigan ‑0.7671053
North Carolina ‑0.811959
South Carolina ‑0.8196676
Illinois ‑0.9103957
Ohio ‑0.9599612
Delaware ‑1.057948
Florida ‑1.072601
District of Columbia ‑1.091851
New York ‑1.225912
Kentucky ‑1.330388
Massachusetts ‑1.342607
Wisconsin ‑1.410286
New Jersey ‑1.431843
Connecticut ‑1.606663
Alabama ‑1.863769
Oklahoma ‑1.93511
West Virginia ‑2.244921
Mississippi ‑2.519249
Lots of technical background can be found at Sorens’s post on the Pileus blog. More on the broader libertarian vote here and especially in this ebook.
