I began a series yesterday where I discussed what the libertarian political strategy should look like over the next decade. To see the start of that series you can go here:
In that article I adamantly forwarded the position that our target demographic should be the historic non-voter who is registered to vote. But who are these people? Let’s take a look:
During presidential elections voter turnout far outpaces voter turnout during mid-terms (35%-40% of registered voters) or even local elections (where 15%-20% registered voter turnout is the norm.)
Literally 100% of the voting population has some sort of an opinion about every presidential election so you’d think voter turnout would rock into the high B+ or A- range, right?
But it’s nowhere near that. In 2016 we actually had pretty high vote numbers, even though voter percentage was down a bit. In other words, the Trump media will tell you that more people voted in 2016 than usual (for modern standards) and the Hillary media will tell you that voter percentage was lower than usual. And both of them are correct. That’s the fun part about statistics. (My statistics and Game Theory teacher in college once proclaimed that “9-out-of-10 people enjoy gang rape. So statistics are fucked.”) So clearly, we need to consider the veracity of statistics.
But, that’s not even my argument. Academic papers will be written ad nauseam about the 2 or 3 percentage points that each of the old parties could have squeaked out to win over “voters.” But our strategy, and our opportunity is so much simpler.
I don’t want to go after voters. I want to go after historic non-voters. Consider this macro:
See that big ol’ chunk of “Didn’t Vote” up there? Those are our people. They don’t buy into the old party duopoly. They don’t think they’re being represented. But they’ve all literally taken the time to actually register to vote. They just didn’t do it.
And this isn’t an anomaly; this is what modern elections look like.
How many of you reading this are actually INELIGIBLE to vote for any number of reasons? That 46.9 up there isn’t ineligible. They actually registered. They just didn’t vote.
Those are our people. (You ineligibles are our people, as well. But that’s a different post.)
And in order to excite them, mobilize them, comfort them, and otherwise activate them we have to show them that we are different than the old parties. We have to stop looking like, sounding like, and campaigning like the old parties. We have to give them an actual 3rd option.
Adam Kokesh has been traveling the country for years and talking to ordinary Americans from coast to coast and everywhere in between. The message that we’ve crafted: freedom and Localization, is incredibly popular on Main Street and highlights how we can defeat statism.
But there’s another target demo: Millennials. I’ll talk more about them in the next post. Stay tuned.