Posted by Krzysztof Lesiak at ATPR. Any IPR readers want to make an early prediction?
On January 4th, a new thread was posted on the popular Dave Leip’s US Elections Forum asking forum users who their pick is for the 2016 Libertarian Party presidential candidate. In a poll with 63 votes, Gary Johnson is in the lead with 29 votes, followed by Darryl W. Perry with 14 votes, Jesse Ventura with 9 votes, John McAfee with 6 votes, and all other choices with 5 votes.
Below the poll, one user named sparkey gave his own analysis on how the 2016 Libertarian Party presidential nomination vote will play out in May in Orlando:
Bonus question: How do you think the nomination will go?
I’m leaning toward Johnson at this point but have been impressed by Petersen and McAfee, more than Ventura. I’m guessing that Johnson will announce soon and win on the first ballot again, but with a much more narrow majority. I don’t think Ventura will announce, and the CSPAN debate this year will probably include: Johnson, McAfee, Petersen, Kerbel, and Perry. I doubt that any of the others, including McAfee, will be a particularly close second place, although I also think it’s likely that Johnson will perform poorly in the debate.
Here’s my way-too-early prediction for the balloting. As a reminder, 2012 went like this on the first ballot:
Johnson: 70%
Wrights: 26%
scattering/NOTA: 4%Here’s one way it could go on the first ballot for 2016:
Johnson: 52% (wide variety of support, including a lock on the Barr ’08 supporters, i.e. the party’s dominant right-leaning pragmatist wing)
McAfee: 17% (supported by some of the Russo ’04 and Gravel ’08 supporters, but gets no support at all from radicals)
Perry: 15% (supported by some of the Badnarik ’04 / Ruwart ’08 / Wrights ’12 crowd, i.e. radicals, who should give him a better showing than he deserves)
Petersen: 7% (supported by some of the Root ’08 crowd, he is second to Johnson to the party’s large right-leaning pragmatist wing so I think he shows more poorly than expected)
Kerbel: 5% (supported by some of the Nolan ’04 crowd, i.e. Harry Browne’s old guard)
scattering/NOTA: 4%
With Ventura, I think Jesse literally halves the McAfee support since he draws from a similar wing, and also drains a bit from Johnson, and forces multiple ballots, something like:
1st ballot:
Johnson: 42%
Ventura: 20%
Perry: 15%
McAfee: 9%
Petersen: 5%
Kerbel: 5%
scattering/NOTA: 4%2nd ballot:
Johnson: 49%
Ventura: 21%
Perry: 15%
McAfee: 9%
Petersen: 5%
scattering/NOTA: 1%3rd ballot:
Johnson: 52%
Ventura: 23%
Perry: 15%
McAfee: 9%
scattering/NOTA: 1%
Yep.
Canoli said: “Candidates who limit their own campaigns by limiting how much they will accept from a given donor or what forms the donation may take will probably do worse as a result, because many delegates will likely see that as ways to self-limit those campaigns post-nomination as well and thus limit their ability to reach voters.”
Me: This is a primary reason why I prefer Kerbel to Perry, and most of the other candidates to Feldman.
I wouldn’t say that.
Not all radicals will vote solely or primarily on the basis of being radical. I have a variety of different things I am looking for in a candidate and radical positioning is just one of them.
If I do decide to vote on that consideration above others, it will probably be for Perry, if the field remains as it is now. I wouldn’t presume that it will.
From what I can observe radicals are not united behind a single candidate at this point. Kerbel has won some respect with his recent ads/statements but that’s not the same thing as saying “radicals have united behind Kerbel.”
I love Darryl Perry and wish he was a frontrunner for the nomination, but he is not. The radicals have united behind Kerbel.
The radical wing united behind Ruwart in 2008. Yes, some of us started with Kubby, but relations were friendly and everyone knew where Kubby’s and Ruwart’s delegates would go if one of them was knocked out of contention.
That’s not to say that all of Ruwart’s supporters were radicals; she took a portion of the non-radical delegates too.
The “radical” wing will split. They did it in ’08, and I believe that they’ll do it again. I don’t know how McAfee will do, but when I ask people (libertarians as well as non-libertarians) the feedback I’ve gotten is mostly “oh my gosh, he’s a murder suspect” or “isn’t that the drug dealer that lost billions of dollars?” The public perception, right or wrong, is that he’s got major issues. How that will go over with delegates is hard to predict.
I need to know a lot more about how a potential Johnson campaign would be run and how they’d prevent the same slush-fund style payouts to consultants a second time around. I don’t think there are as many people who’ll just vote for him without answers as many are predicting. Picking a candidate includes how they plan to run.
Clearly.
I meant “clearly better”….
tk: I wasn’t talking about the extremists, I was talking about the radicals. There will be a considerable radical bloc at the convention.
Me: I just don’t find those who use the “radical” label to be radical. Still, I do apologize, for when I’ve discussed this before, I believe I landed on “plumbliners” as a more accurate description of the self-labeled “radicals” in the LP and LM.
tk: I wasn’t opining in this particular respect as to whether or not Perry is “a good candidate.” I was opining — correctly — that he’s clearly a better candidate than Kerbel on pretty much every metric.
me: “Clearer better” in your judgment. Other plumbliners may have a different judgment, and that, I submit, does not make them “dumb,” just different from you.
You were talking about Q3, not Q4. And even Q4 is still a very poor gauge of which campaigns will raised and spend over 5k. Momentum continues to build through Q1-’16 and Q2-’16. Some of the leading campaigns may not even be announced, or for that matter even hinted at, until Q1 or even Q2 of ’16. It’s downright silly to base your assessments on Q4 of ’15 and even more so on Q3 of ’15.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think much changed in Q4 of ’15. There were not a lot of conventions for anyone to travel to even if they wanted to, none of those candidates did much of an outside media blitz this past quarter, none of them had ads that looked like they cost any significant money to make, as far as I know none of them even did mailings to likely delegates (although I’ve been away from my snail mail address the whole time so I could be wrong on that last one).
However, I do expect that to change in Q1 or certainly Q2. At least, it will need to if any of these candidates seriously hope to get enough tokens to make the CSPAN debate stage or possibly even to be formally placed in nomination.
Kerbel has the ability to self-fund to make that required change, and will do it if he doesn’t give up completely and if he doesn’t raise a lot of money from other people. Perry does not, so he’ll be in the same position we found ourselves in with the Kubby campaign in 2008 as far as money to do anything at all, and perhaps even more so.
Thus, while what you are saying about Q3 is presumably true (I haven’t checked, but I wouldn’t expect you to lie about something like that), and while I expect it to also be true of Q4, it’s not very relevant to the original point – what the delegates will be seeing by May. That’s what will influence their assessment of the relative strength of the various campaigns, not what those campaigns were or were not doing the previous year, way back before many of the leading campaigns even existed at all.
“Yes, Tom, I would expect something to change between Q3 of 2015 and Q2 of 2016”
But we’re not talking about Q2 of 2016, we’re talking about Q4 of 2015.
What I was saying — ALL I was saying — is that unless things have changed in the last quarter of 2015 (the reporting deadline for that quarter isn’t until the 15th of this month), Kerbel isn’t notably ahead of Perry or Feldman when it comes to fundraising.
I’m surprised you find that claim controversial. Or maybe you’re just trying to make something inherently non-controversial into something controversial. Or maybe you just don’t understand what the hell I’m saying, even though I thought I was pretty damn clear.
Yes, Tom, I would expect something to change between Q3 of 2015 and Q2 of 2016. Campaigns build momentum over time and even campaigns that already existed in Q3 of 2015 had and still have a lot of momentum building to do. Most of the state convention visits and whatever other spending they do or fail to do will be in 2016, even for those who declared in 2015. Likewise for most of the donations they get whether from the candidate or other supporters.
Now, I don’t expect for a second that you don’t already know this, or that you think anyone reading doesn’t already know it. So I’m not sure what you are trying to demonstrate. I don’t think that anyone who has paid close attention doubts your admitted ability to purposely “yank people’s chains” with deliberately silly arguments. You don’t have anything to prove on that score.
Paulie,
What about Q3? The only reason I mentioned Q3 is to indicate that that was the last relevant filing deadline and that UNLESS SOMETHING HAS CHANGED SINCE THEN, Kerbel isn’t raising/spending significant money either — which would make the difference between him and Perry/Feldman on that front a matter of “none of them are raising or spending significant money; Feldman and Perry are making positive propaganda out of that, Kerbel just isn’t mentioning it.”
If something HAS changed since Q3, then something’s changed since Q3.
I agree.
Yes, but Q3? Come on.
Although, I am undecided again this time and will likely remain that way for some time, quite likely til the convention again.
Gary has done MSNBC plenty of times. I expect he will be on MSNBC more between now and the nomination than everyone else seeking the LP nomination combined. He touted having more ACLU torches than any other candidate the ACLU bothered to include in the rankings in 2012 (including Obama and Ron Paul) heavily all throughout the last election and ever since. The issues he emphasized most heavily in his campaign videos, tweets, interviews, etc., etc., included a lot of left-leaning (peace and civil liberties) issues. And I paid very, very close attention to all aspects of the campaign all throughout the 2012 election season and to the until now unofficial campaign for 2016 ever since.
So, go ahead and get out your straw and snort all that Diet Dr. Pepper right back up your nose. If you don’t have a straw just hold one nostril closed with your finger and snort it hard right up the other nostril. I agree with Andy C and Caryn on Gary appealing more to the left and center than the right. If that had not been the case I would not have become an active supporter to begin with. To me, that outbalanced the negatives, which I did not and do not find to be trivial either. It was a last minute decision literally at the convention. But, I would still cast the same vote now if I had a time machine. And I still don’t regret actively participating in the campaign post-nomination despite the drawbacks.
“Also, Kerbel has the ability to self-fund all the travel he wants, and a few other things”
And that self-funding would count toward the $5k reporting threshold.
“Feldman can at least afford to self-finance to a less trivial extent, but I don’t think his personality is connecting well with a lot of likely delegates.”
I was only mentioning Feldman vis a vis the campaign finance thing that you brought up. I think the guy is likable and has some interesting ideas, but he’s neither likely to appeal to radicals nor to be able to compete with the big dogs for everyone else’s attention. That’s just how things go sometimes.
If that’s their one and only consideration in picking a candidate, yes.
Q3 is a very bad way to gauge it. The pace has already picked up quite a bit since then and will pick up a lot more between now and May. Also, Kerbel has the ability to self-fund all the travel he wants, and a few other things; Perry does not. Even if Kerbel does not raise much actual money, he won’t be perceived as self-limiting in the same way as Perry, and I think that perception will count more than poring over FEC reports or paying attention to those who do, neither of which I believe a significant portion of delegates will be doing.
Yes, but I don’t think those attempts will work out well for them as far as most delegates are concerned.
Feldman can at least afford to self-finance to a less trivial extent, but I don’t think his personality is connecting well with a lot of likely delegates.
No matter how dumb Tom may think it is, my support right now is with Kerbel and Perry (he would think the first choice was dumb). I haven’t decided yet. I probably won’t decide until I get there. I volunteer to do promotion work for both. I am a bit more entrenched in the Kerbel campaign, but I have yet to “endorse” anyone, just say who I support.
And I am definitely an “against” voter. I am “against” anyone who trashes our SoP. So how I can effectively vote against such a person will influence my vote.
“Kerbel has achieved the difficult act of appealing to the moderate base without alienating the more radical wing, and in fact, getting them on board.”
Is that based on any hard data, or just on the ability to stuff non-scientific Internet polls?
Yeah, because announcing your candidacy on Cavuto and having the bulk of your national media coverage delivered via Faux News indicates “a stronger inclination towards appealing to the left and center less the right.”
Jesus. Y’all owe me a new keyboard. Just snorted Diet Dr. Pepper all over mine.
Langa,
===Regarding the possibility of multiple ballots (with or without Ventura), if Kerbel is eliminated early, I don’t think his supporters will go to Johnson. Most of the people I have heard voicing support for Kerbel seem to be in the radical/purist camp, so I would expect most of them would switch to Perry. Johnson would probably get a few, but certainly not the majority.===
This depends. If AP is still in, their votes will be to “not AP” whatever the person who has the best chance at that.
But in my time on FB, I don’t see that as a large block of Kerbel support. Because we aren’t a large block to begin with.
I think you are confused by this…. out of radical/purists (of which I am one), a large block of THEM support Kerbel. But out of Kerbel’s overall support, the radical/purists are just a small minority as we are in the general LP populace.
Kerbel has achieved the difficult act of appealing to the moderate base without alienating the more radical wing, and in fact, getting them on board.
==I also don’t know that I’d identify Johnson’s supporters, or the “dominant pragmatist wing,” as more to the right. If anything there’s been a stronger inclination towards appealing to the left and center less the right, from both Johnson and that broader camp. How “dominant” they are is also debatable.==
I agree Andy.
===Petersen: 7% (supported by some of the Root ’08 crowd, he is second to Johnson to the party’s large right-leaning pragmatist wing so I think he shows more poorly than expected)===
LOL. Root.
“That could happen again, but I don’t think it’s likely.”
Just to be clear, I wasn’t asserting that Darryl is likely to win the nomination. Just that for people looking for a radical candidate, he’s clearly a superior choice versus Kerbel.
I would say that that’s probably true when it comes to campaign finance as well, or at least that there’s not a very large difference. Kerbel, as of the Q3 reporting period, either hadn’t raised/spent enough to trigger FEC reporting requirements, or else is also abstaining from complying with those requirements.
It’s hard to raise money for an LP nomination campaign, especially if you’re not one of one or two “big wheel” types with a campaign team dedicated to raising those funds for you — and consuming most of those funds on their own care and feeding. Perry and Feldman have attempted to make a campaign propaganda virtue out of minimizing fundraising efforts that wouldn’t go well for them anyway.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think the contrived bookkeeping “issue” is going to have much traction. We shall see, though. It could. My best guess is still what I said last comment, though.
Yes, but I was talking about delegate perception, which is what drives delegate votes. I’ll still stand by what I said last comment as far as that goes too.
Also…those entities can’t fund candidate travel. And they have some other disadvantages. The candidate can’t promote them in interviews or on campaign materials. If people look up the candidate and only go to the official campaign website, it may not have the campaign materials they want, which would be on the other website that they are not going to. And so on.
Also, just because such an entity can be formed it doesn’t mean that it will be or that it would demonstrate any such ability in time for the delegates to vote.
He attended a lot of conventions, worked very hard, demonstrated charisma, did well in the debates, and benefited from two better known and financed opponents who neutralized and destroyed each other. That could happen again, but I don’t think it’s likely.
Paulie,
That’s an interesting point, which you and several others have previously made. Two things to think about:
1) If Perry has raised only $5, he is still. $1.x million +$5 ahead of Johnson on the fundraising metric.
2) There is nothing whatsoever to stop the LNC, as well as PACs, from spending money to promote the post-nomination campaign. In fact, the LNC’s own bylaws require it to support the presidential campaign. Given the peccadilloes of past presidential campaigns, I’m not convinced that it would be such a bad thing to have most of the money spent on the presidential campaign raised, and spent, by entities other than the campaign itself. The only LP presidential campaign I can think of since I’ve been with the LP (starting in 1996) which has managed its way through a general election campaign without very real and reasonable questions being raised as to the wisdom and ethics of its spending, was that of Michael Badnarik. Who, it’s worth mentioning, raised and spent very little pre-nomination and arrived in Atlanta without enough money to pay for a room at the convention hotel, yet came away with the nomination.
Candidates who limit their own campaigns by limiting how much they will accept from a given donor or what forms the donation may take will probably do worse as a result, because many delegates will likely see that as ways to self-limit those campaigns post-nomination as well and thus limit their ability to reach voters.
Candidates who can afford to visit a lot of state conventions will probably do better than ones who can’t. Candidates who are willing and able to personally contact likely delegates, starting with past delegates and state and local party officers and state convention attendees, and/or hire staff to do so, will probably do better than those who can’t. Candidates who make a lot of videos and get on a lot of talk shows will also give themselves a boost. Debate performance will be a factor.
Bob,
I wasn’t talking about the extremists, I was talking about the radicals.
There will be a considerable radical bloc at the convention.
I wasn’t opining in this particular respect as to whether or not Perry is “a good candidate.” I was opining — correctly — that he’s clearly a better candidate than Kerbel on pretty much every metric.
I think Jed is correct.
tk, these are judgments, not questions of intellect.
And the extremist Ls may not show up in force.
Or extremists may feel that Perry is not a good candidate, even if they agree with him and admire his writing and radio work.
I’m not labeling it dumb because I disagree with it. I’m labeling it dumb because it’s dumb.
Among the declared candidates, Perry is clearly and indisputably the best choice for radicals who want a candidate who supports their ideological position. That’s a big enough bloc that it should easily outpace Petersen and Feldman, who will be splitting the non-radical vote with McAfee and Johnson.
And among radicals, there’s just no comparison between Perry and Kerbel.
Yes, they both have reasonably strong platforms. BUT:
One of them has a long history of hard work in the movement and in the party; one of them showed up to run for president.
One of them has, so far as I’ve noticed, no scandals in his background; the other has at least two, even if he has good explanations for why they shouldn’t be a concern.
One of them co-hosts a political talk radio program that allegedly boasts 160 radio station affiliates and several thousand nightly Internet listeners; one of them, um, doesn’t.
If radicals split their vote between these two, or worse yet go for Kerbel over Perry, they don’t deserve to retain what influence they currently have in the party because They. Are. Dumb.
tk: That’s just too goddamn dumb to even contemplate.
me: Oy. Trump seems to be affecting even YOU, TK. Labeling things you disagree with as “dumb.”
Doh. Forgot to subscribe.
Quoth Jed:
“I’ll say Johnson first, then McAfee, Kerbel, Petersen, Feldman, NOTA, Perry.”
If Kerbel, Petersen and Feldman come out ahead of Perry on any ballot, I’ll have to re-evaluate my decision to get active in the LP again. That’s just too goddamn dumb to even contemplate.
If I was one of Johnson’s opponents other than McAfee (who’s going to just have to pitch himself and should probably avoid discussing his opponents), I’d be rolling out some heavy artillery on his campaign finances the day he announces.
His campaign is currently $1.x million in debt. He’s proposed a “repayment” plan to the FEC that screws all his actual creditors, while “paying” off the debt that his manage supposedly would prefer to write off by giving him list-mailing privileges that are over-valued by a full order of magnitude in the proposal.
If the FEC accepts his plan, then he starts at zero again, the only real down side being that the vendors who get screwed won’t likely be available to him for this campaign.
If, on the other hand, the FEC doesn’t accept his plan, he’s in the position of needing to raise $1.x million before he’s even in the same position as candidates who have raised nothing whatsoever.
So if I was, say, Austin Petersen and had a few dollars in the bank, I’d be flogging my superior campaign finance position to the LP — and urging the FEC to turn down that repayment plan.
I’ll say Johnson first, then McAfee, Kerbel, Petersen, Feldman, NOTA, Perry. Goes to a second ballot but no further.
I’d love to say McAfee could be first on the first ballot, but idk if Johnson will definitely run or how discipline his campaign will be this time. So, for me, it’s too early to anoint McAfee as the frontrunner in the first round.
If the lineup remains as current, and Johnson doesn’t win on first ballot, then any remaining doubt that the LP is not serious about being a political party will be removed. Like when a teenage newcomer took 1/3 of the vote for chair against Steve Dasbach (was it 1993?)
The primary reasons why I put Feldman in third on the first ballot is because Feldman is a LNC Regional Rep, so he does have at least a regional bloc that can support him, he’s also been campaigning alot, and he’s fun to drink with.
Additionally, I think Kerbel and Perry are probably going to split the same base, with Perry having a slight edge because he is the hardcore Libertarian in the race, so he’ll get all the hardline Libertarian votes.
Either way, by virtue of the size of the field, as well as the notoriety of some of the candidates, will prevent Johnson from walking into the Convention and being coroneted.
I was just going to say the same thing, Jed. I like both Perry and Kerbel, but I think Kerbel has a wider audience right now.
Well on second thought, I think Kerbel will do better than Feldman. So here’s my ranking: Johnson, then McAfee, Kerbel, Perry, Feldman, then Petersen. I won’t speculate on percents yet.
Switch Perry and Kerbel, and it’s pretty accurate I’d say.
Given Johnson’s late entry, two high profile opponents already announced, and 3 strong Libertarian candidates already campaigning for the about a year, I don’t think Johnson can win on the first ballot. Here’s my prediction of the first ballot:
Johnson: 32%
McAfee: 24%
Feldman: 15%
Perry: 10%
Kerbel: 10%
Petersen: 5%
scattering/NOTA: 4%
I definitely believe Feldman will get a very decent amount of the votes at the convention and that Johnson has too much baggage to win outright in the first around. Plus, McAfee is gaining steam, so I think this is probably closer to what will actually happen at the Convention.
Regarding the possibility of multiple ballots (with or without Ventura), if Kerbel is eliminated early, I don’t think his supporters will go to Johnson. Most of the people I have heard voicing support for Kerbel seem to be in the radical/purist camp, so I would expect most of them would switch to Perry. Johnson would probably get a few, but certainly not the majority.
I wouldn’t put that precise a set of numbers on it, but I think the breakdown is pretty good. If I had to place a bet, I would say Ventura doesn’t run and Johnson wins on the first ballot with between 50-60%.
One thing I would say, is that there isn’t really as much carryover in the split from past candidates as your analysis implies. I don’t think there is any sort of “Gravel bloc” or “Barr bloc.” etc. –at most such references are to the way certain loose inclinations have manifested in the past. But it’s more fluid than that, particularly if you’re going back two or three cycles, and particularly when you consider that convention attendance sees very high % first-time attendees.
I also don’t know that I’d identify Johnson’s supporters, or the “dominant pragmatist wing,” as more to the right. If anything there’s been a stronger inclination towards appealing to the left and center less the right, from both Johnson and that broader camp. How “dominant” they are is also debatable.
I think Jesse Ventura has the best chance at getting in the debates. Plus when he speaks, people listen. If he can do what he did in Minnesota, he could pull an upset.
I think it’s way too early to make an accurate prediction, or even know what other candidates may yet jump in. But if the voting was now and the delegates were the ones most likely to be delegates now I think Sparkey would be roughly in the right ballpark.
I thought they were good predictions sparkey. I too expect Johnson to win on the first ballot, with McAfee his only real competition. I don’t think a lot of the 70+ percent that supported Johnson in 2012 can be swayed by another candidate aside from maybe McAfee(I don’t expect Ventura to run, so they’d be the only “big names”), though I do think he’ll perform a bit weaker on the ballot now that some of the novelty is gone and people are perhaps more realistic about his chances.
I also believe Johnson will easily place third again, unless the Republican split and someone from them runs third party. Either way though, I’m optimistic he can do someone better than 2012 if either of the two current frontrunners for the GOP nomination gets it, with Trump providing the better opportunity for outreach.
It’s hilarious to me that my thread over there got picked up here as news.
One thing that IPR readers may not be aware of is that Darryl W. Perry is a former member on that forum, and ironic support for him is a bit of a gag there. The forum is populated by all sorts of political stripes and definitely isn’t exclusively Libertarian.
With that in mind, I’m very curious about how others see the different LP factions voting in this Presidential race. My observations are very casual so don’t take them as expert opinion.
Interesting poll, although not surprising. It’s quite obvious that the only sane man on that ballot is Gary Johnson, the others are either conspiracy nuts or practically unheard of.