WendyMcElroy.com

Tip of the hat to blog-reader esteem who writes, Here is an interesting analysis (entitled Ron Paul and the GOP Plan to Take Back the Libertarian Vote) on how Ron Paul may have saved the Republicans from losing more seats. The author argues that Paul moved a lot of libertarians into the Republican Party and absorbed a lot of liberarian money. He says much of this was taken away from the Libertarian Party. In previous elections the LP candidate took enough Republican votes to hurt the GOP and lose them the seat. Now, he says, that it will take months for the Libertarian Party to regroup and get these members re-registered as Libertarians. The net result, he thinks, is that the LP could lose ballot status in several states and that it will now be more likely for Republicans to win seats they previously would have lost.

That is, lost to libertarians. Amazing. How many years, dollars and man-hours did the LP devote to registering people to vote libertarian? Then, with Paul, it became almost a libertarian duty to switch affiliation to Republican to vote for Paul. Does anyone believe that the disillusioned electorate will now switch back to LP affiliation en masse?

Reader J.A. writes an interesting email in counterpoint to the above:

I think the linked article, your reader and you are misunderstanding the impact of the LP vote. Although I'm no longer an LP member, I'm familiar enough with some of the nuances. For one, the LP Presidential candidate has rarely had much influence in the Presidential race (I think the closest may have been in 2000 when both Nader and Browne were running). OTOH, the LP congressional candidates have been more than the margin of difference in several races. IIRC, in Washington state they claimed to have swayed the vote between R & D's in a couple of cycles. Furthermore, ballot status does not generally depend on the number of registered LP voters. In some states, the LP has ballot status because one of their statewide candidates achieved some percentage of the vote in an election and that carries over to one or more cycles. In other states, ballot status is obtained by petitioning for signatures, a process that is either done by volunteers or paid petitioners. In any case, even if someone switched their LP registration to R to vote for Paul in the primaries, as you know they can still vote for anyone in November. Further, some states only recognize "independent" or similar designation, and none of the minor parties.