Our best estimate
quately capture the nuances of any ideology.
government is getting too involved in
Intellectuals could quibble with the wording
the issue of morality.
is that the
of all these questions. Certainly we do not
libertarian vote is
claim that the "libertarians" these polls identi-
Using those three questions from the Pew
about 13 percent
fy have read Ayn Rand or Robert Nozick. But
2004 survey, we find that 14 percent of the vot-
we do think that the questions we have used
ing-age population can be classified as liber-
of the national
are valid for identifying people who cannot
tarian.
population, or
fairly be classified as either "liberal" or "con-
Overall, we conclude that the libertarian
servative" as those terms are understood in
vote is substantial and growing. Figure 3 pre-
28 million
contemporary American politics. The screens
sents five different calculations. The Pew
Americans of
identify Americans who fall outside the red-
Research Center's Typology Survey assessed
voting age.
blue divide in a broadly libertarian direction,
it at 9 percent, while the Gallup Governance
skeptical of government involvement in both
Surveys consistently assign about 20 percent
economic and personal matters.
of respondents to the libertarian category.
To check that claim, we performed a validi-
Using our own methods, we have three data
ty test on two groups of ideologically sophisti-
points for 2004 using separate data sets--
cated respondents, employees of the libertarian
Gallup at 9 percent (but 13 percent in the
Cato Institute and the conservative Heritage
2005 survey), ANES at 13, and Pew at 14. Our
Foundation. We asked each group to answer
best estimate is that the libertarian vote is
the nine questions drawn from the Gallup,
about 13 percent of the national population,
ANES, and Pew surveys, along with several
or 28 million Americans of voting age.
other questions from those surveys that we did
According to ANES, from 1992 to 2004, the
not choose to use in our national screening. We
libertarian vote grew 4 percentage points,
from 9 to 13 percent.28
also asked each respondent to self-identify his
or her own ideological position. Those tests
confirmed that our questions are correctly sep-
A Note on Validity
arating libertarians from conservatives. More
As noted above, no survey of ideologies is
details can be found in the Appendix.
definitive. Simple poll questions cannot ade-
Figure 3
Measures of Libertarians in the Electorate
25
20
15
10
5
0
Pew issues
Gallup 2-
Gallup 3-
ANES 2004
ANES
Pew values
2004
ques tion
ques tion
reported
2004
2005
2005
voters 2004
11