What would be considered a Libertarian Party "victory" in November?

[Perotista]

What would be considered a Libertarian Party "victory" in November?

"Victory" not necessarily being literal, as in winning the White House (though I'm going to include that as a poll option anyway), but being a major step forward and something to legitimately build on.

Considering no Libertarian Party candidate has ever received as much as one percent of the total vote in its long history, cracking that barrier would be a major step forward. But let's be honest here. The only reason Johnson is at 9% in the polls according to the RCP averages is his last name is not Trump or Clinton.

RealClearPolitics - Election 2016 - General Election: Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein

When 57% of all Americans dislike Clinton, according to Economist/Yougov and Bloomberg polls and the same polls show 63% of all Americans dislike Trump. That is a whole bunch of dislikes for a third party candidate to take advantage of. If this election was more of a normal one, if the two candidates were not Trump and Clinton or if one party or the other had offered up a decent candidate, no one would be worried about the Libertarian Party. They would get close to their normal one percent.

I don't see where getting five percent, ten percent in this environment is something or anything to build on. All that would mean is enough voters were thoroughly disgusted with the choice of Trump and Clinton they voted for someone else, anyone else. Look at this way, we haven't had a presidential race where a candidate didn't have an approval rating of 50% or higher since 1992 when the first Bush, G.H.W. Bush set the all time low for a presidential candidate at 46%. That record will be smashed by both these candidates. According to Gallup Clinton is at 38% approval and Trump at 32%. Not much love there.

The bottom line is the Libertarian Party needs to start getting people elected at the state and local levels if it ever hopes to become more than an asterisk on the national political scene.

 

[chromium]

There's not building anything. Their pet peeves, like getting rid of the Civil Rights Act, and i have even seen them push legal child labor, are just too fringe. A socialist 3rd party, or an actual fiscal conservative party (not republicans) with the right candidate could build something a hell of a lot easier than libertarian. In fact, a conservative party could come right along, hijack certain libertarian proposals (much smaller defense budget) and ditch the more fringe ones. "Libertarian" just has really high negatives. They get on the ballot every time and never finish higher than like 2%. They have their followers and everyone else thinks their nuts or ignore them

 

[chromium]

Have more seats in city councils, county commissions, school boards, etc, than they did. There's no victory in the Presidential election or even Congressional ones, since there's no chance they will get elected to any of those positions. What they need is to prove themselves as being better than the establishment parties and that's going to take a local effort to prove that they are qualified.

except they're not better, in fact if they had control of legislative and executive they would very quickly send the country into chaos, so fat chance of that

Rather cordon off a space in which no government exists, than to bring them to power. I wouldn't elect a libertarian to patient liaison at the psych ward

 

[Henrin]

There's not building anything. Their pet peeves, like getting rid of the Civil Rights Act, and i have even seen them push legal child labor, are just too fringe. A socialist 3rd party, or an actual fiscal conservative party (not republicans) with the right candidate could build something a hell of a lot easier than libertarian. In fact, a conservative party could come right along, hijack certain libertarian proposals (much smaller defense budget) and ditch the more fringe ones. "Libertarian" just has really high negatives. They get on the ballot every time and never finish higher than like 2%. They have their followers and everyone else thinks their nuts or ignore them

Many libertarians push the idea that children have the right to work. That it was wrong of the state to take away the rights of children to deal with issues of children being forced to work. They also don't support getting rid of the civil rights act, but repealing two provisions of the act that deal with private individuals.

 

[haymarket]

Since they have not hit a full ONE PERCENT of the popular vote in the last several presidential elections - it would be significant if they could double or triple that this time. But a real "victory" is something libertarians have no concept of and never will experience.

 

[DA60]

A Libertarian Party victory.

The main reason Gary Johnson is doing so well - other than the fact he makes a TON of common sense - is that the two main parties are a complete mess. And both of their leaders are jokes - one is flat out hated/distrusted and the other is a buffoon. If the Dems/Reps had decent nominees with reasonable ideas - the Libertarian party would probably be like always; down in the low single digits in popularity (unfortunately).

In other words, the Libertarians are doing well mainly because the other two parties stink to high heaven at this point in history...neither has a clue how to run the country properly. This is nothing really new. The difference is the ignorant masses (especially the middle aged/younger ones) are not NEARLY as ignorant as they used to be. Probably mostly due to the internet.