Shocker! Gary Johnson hits 19% support in nationwide poll

Of course, as Wes Benedict explains, the poll left out Mitt Romney's name.

This is good enough to quote in its entirety from the Libertarian Action SuperPAC:

Dear Libertarian:

Please donate now so LASPAC can conduct another poll.

We just conducted a nationwide telephone poll of registered voters. Here's what the poll sounded like.

The results:

Barack Obama 56%

Gary Johnson 19%

Undecided/neither 25%

You may be thinking, "Why does that matter, since it doesn't include the Republican?"

Here's why it matters:

Gallup has been conducting presidential polls just like this.

Note the wording of their question:

"Suppose the presidential election were held today. If Barack Obama were the Democratic Party's candidate and Mitt Romney were the Republican Party's candidate, who would you vote for, Barack Obama, the Democrat or Mitt Romney, the Republican?"

It includes the incumbent, Obama, plus one selected challenger, Romney -- and no one else.

Now here's our question:

"Suppose the presidential election were held today. If Barack Obama were the Democratic Party's candidate and Gary Johnson were the Libertarian Party's candidate, who would you vote for, Barack Obama, the Democrat or Gary Johnson, the Libertarian?"

It's exactly the same question, except we picked a different challenger.

The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) wants candidates to get at least 15% in nationwide polls. But most of those polls only include Obama and Romney. So, if those polls count, then our poll counts too.

We did this poll cheaply (but scientifically) using a less-known robocall firm. Now we want to do it again, on a bigger scale, using a well-known polling organization like Public Policy Polling, SurveyUSA, or Gallup. If we ask the question the same way (just like Gallup), Gary Johnson has a very good chance of getting more than 15%.

Let's show that to the Commission on Presidential Debates! They can't have it both ways -- they can't include biased polls that only name Obama and Romney, and then ignore polls like ours.

We'd love to push the CPD into a corner. If they have to accept polls like this, then Gary Johnson has a great chance of getting into the debates. At worst, they'll have to start demanding that all their polling organizations include Gary Johnson -- and that would be a good thing too.

Please donate today. (When you make your donation, type "poll" in the comment box.) We estimate the larger poll will cost about $3,000. If we can raise just $1,500 for this poll, LASPAC will kick in the rest to run the poll.

Also please forward this message to your Libertarian friends and post it on Facebook. Send people to this address: http://bit.ly/PoAPhE

We'll keep you posted on how much we've raised periodically on the LASPAC homepage.

If we don't raise enough to run the poll, we'll return your contributions designated for the poll.

Please donate now!

Thanks!

Wes Benedict

President, Libertarian Action Super PAC

http://laspac.org/

512-659-8896

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...

The disturbing decline of the Delaware blogosphere: a very unfortunate Around the Horn (even if it's not Friday)

I've noticed a change in my own blog-checking habits over the past several weeks, and I don't know if it's just me or the reality of the last month of a divisive political campaign. I automatically used to check out Delawareliberal first and several times a day, because it was where I could find edgy, thought-provoking, and (dare I say it) funny banter going on. These days visit several other spots first, and my visits to DL are both shorter and less engaged. Why? Because the combination of invading neo-con commenters with the stridency of some of the major contributors has led to such pleasant exchanges as a post dedicated to labeling another blogger racist by donviti, whose own sense of provocative humor is generally so far out there that he makes John Belushi doing Samurai bartender on the SNL look positively pro-Asian. Or I can find Delawaredem and jason periodically spewing the idea that anybody who is not a liberal or progressive Democrat is somehow a non-American,...

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