Gauging Ron Paul Support

[NickMPK]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Can you cite an issue on which he campaigned on the side of the social libertarians?

[/ QUOTE ]
Wiki:
"By the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan as president and the growing involvement of the religious right in conservative politics, Goldwater's libertarian views on personal issues were revealed, which he believed were an integral part of true conservativism. Goldwater viewed abortion as a matter of personal choice, not intended for government intervention.


[/ QUOTE ]

That's exactly what I said. Goldwater personally had many libertarian views, but either he didn't hold these inclinations in 1964, or he hid them from the voters when he ran for president because he would have had no chance to win the GOP primary if he had run as a social libertarian. The fact that someone who was secretly libertarian could win a party's primary (and then lose in a landslide general election) doesn't say much for the popularity of libertarianism among the electorate.

[Nielsio]

[ QUOTE ]
Oh, I think it's definitely on the rise, entirely due to the Internet, but I certainly don't think there's going to be a huge uprising anytime soon or anything.

[/ QUOTE ]



<font color="purple">The times, they are a-changin'</font>

[Richard Tanner]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Oh, I think it's definitely on the rise, entirely due to the Internet, but I certainly don't think there's going to be a huge uprising anytime soon or anything.

[/ QUOTE ]


<font color="purple">The times, they are a-changin'</font>

[/ QUOTE ]

Bob Dylan, awesome.

Niels, honest question, from your picutres I'd guess you're about 24ish, do you expect to see any major (i.e. first world) government collapse and go AC in your lifetime? If not, do you expect to see a large Libertarian movement in those countries in your lifetime.

Cody

[Richard Tanner]

[ QUOTE ]
Are people actually quoting facebook search results as statistical data on the politcal viewpoints of college students? really? Why don't we do some searches by religion and see what today's most popular religions are. Oh wait. That's utterly retarded.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ows, are you leveling us here? No one likes to talk about their views more then College kids, and the best outlets they have right now are 1)Forums like 2+2 2) Myspace/Facebook and 3) Campus rallies/coffee shops. Why would looking for groups on facebook be "utterly retarded". Politicians do it, businesses do it.

Cody

[XxGodJrxX]

I don't think Barry Goldwater hid anything. We are talking about one of the most direct politicians ever. He would go to old people and tell them that he plans on stopping Social Security and go to pacifists and tell them that he plans on nuking the Soviet Union. Social liberty was not a HUGE deal in those days though. Whether Goldwater or Johnson had won the election, social liberty would not have been in danger either way. The essential differences between Johnson and Goldwater were on economic issues.

In the 1960's, religion was not as embedded with politics like it is today. It was not until the Reagan administration that the Republican party began catering to the Christian right. Frankly, I think that Ronald Reagan is directly responsible for today's attempts to restrict abortion, prevent stem cell research, etc. Barry Goldwater was very upset with the direction that the supposed "Conservative" party was taking.

[owsley]

I just checked the facebook "election" applicatin, and here are the current results:

1. Obama, 24%
2. Giuliani, 13%
3. Clinton, 7%
4. Paul, 7%
5. Thompson, 5%
6 Romney, 5%
etc, out of 140k votes.

dare i say... booya?

edit- and for reasons I've listed which no one ever responds to, Paul's support is going to go up rather than down as the election cycle peaks.

[Richard Tanner]

[ QUOTE ]
I just checked the facebook "election" applicatin, and here are the current results:

1. Obama, 24%
2. Giuliani, 13%
3. Clinton, 7%
4. Paul, 7%
5. Thompson, 5%
6 Romney, 5%
etc, out of 140k votes.

dare i say... booya?

edit- and for reasons I've listed which no one ever responds to, Paul's support is going to go up rather than down as the election cycle peaks.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cody: YOu can use Facebook to gauge.
Ows: No you can't
Cody: Sure you can, here's why...
Ows: Well I just used Facebook to prove that you can...booya
Cody: But that's what I was...wait what?

That's where I'm at now.

In any case, I hope Ron gets a ton of support, but it's important to keep perspective here. The only effective gauge of his support will be the primaries, until then alot of it is speculation.

Cody

[Richard Tanner]

[ QUOTE ]
edit- and for reasons I've listed which no one ever responds to, Paul's support is going to go up rather than down as the election cycle peaks.

[/ QUOTE ]

Who is saying that Paul isn't getting more popular?

Cody

[GoodCallYouWin]

The Ron Paul facebook group is also about 10x as active as the Obama facebook group, which has 20x as many members (15,000 vs 300,000). Not sure what that means.

[NickMPK]

[ QUOTE ]
I just checked the facebook "election" applicatin, and here are the current results:

1. Obama, 24%
2. Giuliani, 13%
3. Clinton, 7%
4. Paul, 7%
5. Thompson, 5%
6 Romney, 5%
etc, out of 140k votes.

dare i say... booya?

edit- and for reasons I've listed which no one ever responds to, Paul's support is going to go up rather than down as the election cycle peaks.

[/ QUOTE ]

What are your reasons again? Because I'm pretty sure I responded.

You can't use internet support to gauge actual electoral support for libertarians. They are overrepresented in internet forums by a factor of at least 10. In 2004, a prominent non-partisan political forum I post in held a "mock election" that got about 7,000 votes from their members. These were the results. (For those that don't want to click, Badnarik got 24% of the popular vote, beating George Bush.)