Blogger and law professor Ilya Somin has a post up called ‘The Libertarian Vote,’ in which he describes recent findings on the number of libertarians in America:
David Kirby and David Boaz have published a new Cato Institute study estimating the size of the “libertarian vote.” They conclude that about 14% of American voters are libertarian in the sense of broadly opposing government regulation in both the economic and social realms. As a libertarian think tank, Cato obviously has a strong interest interest in coming up with a high estimate of the number of libertarian voters. However, Boaz and Kirby rely on polling questions from the National Election Study, a widely respected comprehensive survey of American political opinion developed by primarily liberal political scientists. They also note that other research by Gallup and Zogby comes up with higher estimates for the number of libertarian voters (20 to 25 percent). Other recent surveys show that the vast majority of Americans prefer smaller government with fewer services to larger government with more services (58 to 38 percent), and that trust in government is generally low.
Somin offers much more in the post, including whether actual membership in the LP is a good idea (he says no) and whether the Tea Party movement offers libertarians promise (he says it’s a good start).