So the tea party is wounded and Chris Christie is the face of (R)

[Circuits]

no Libertarian candidate and Cucinelli would have won an election he was supposed to lose by double digits.

Dem machine funded the libertarian candidate quite a bit, too - to successfully split the non-dem vote.

[generalmeow]

Dem machine funded the libertarian candidate quite a bit, too - to successfully split the non-dem vote.

I see a lot of Republicans pissed at Libertarians on other website comment sections, because the Republicans and Libertarians combined for 53% of the votes. The Republicans think those are all their votes. But I think those are all Libertarian votes. The Republicans cost the Libertarian the election.

If the Republicans don't want Libertarians stealing their votes, they need to become Libertarians. As a Libertarian, why would I ever vote for a Republican? They don't represent anything I want. If a Democrat gets elected, so what? It's just going to piss people off more which will in turn help them see things the Libertarian way. The more Democrats win, the more Libertarian conservatives will become. That's a good thing.

[sniper7]

I see a lot of Republicans pissed at Libertarians on other website comment sections, because the Republicans and Libertarians combined for 53% of the votes. The Republicans think those are all their votes. But I think those are all Libertarian votes. The Republicans cost the Libertarian the election.

If the Republicans don't want Libertarians stealing their votes, they need to become Libertarians. As a Libertarian, why would I ever vote for a Republican? They don't represent anything I want. If a Democrat gets elected, so what? It's just going to piss people off more which will in turn help them see things the Libertarian way. The more Democrats win, the more Libertarian conservatives will become. That's a good thing.

Sounds like a wet dream to me.

[avandelay]

I see a lot of Republicans pissed at Libertarians on other website comment sections, because the Republicans and Libertarians combined for 53% of the votes. The Republicans think those are all their votes. But I think those are all Libertarian votes. The Republicans cost the Libertarian the election.

If the Republicans don't want Libertarians stealing their votes, they need to become Libertarians. As a Libertarian, why would I ever vote for a Republican? They don't represent anything I want. If a Democrat gets elected, so what? It's just going to piss people off more which will in turn help them see things the Libertarian way. The more Democrats win, the more Libertarian conservatives will become. That's a good thing.

The issue in VA is that there are good indications that Sarvis (the L candidate) was a shill candidate. He got a lot of campaign funding that can be tracked back to a Dem money bundler and his stance was, in many cases, for more government instead of less. Had the VA Libertarians actually looked at where the candidate stood instead of just looking at his party affiliation then he should have received far fewer votes that, in theory, would have gone to Ken C.

[muddywings]

The issue in VA is that there are good indications that Sarvis (the L candidate) was a shill candidate. He got a lot of campaign funding that can be tracked back to a Dem money bundler and his stance was, in many cases, for more government instead of less. Had the VA Libertarians actually looked at where the candidate stood instead of just looking at his party affiliation then he should have received far fewer votes that, in theory, would have gone to Ken C.

this plus the republican establishment failed to financially back Ken C. and support his candidacy. Basically it sounds like the RINO establishment didn't like a tea party guy raining on their parade so they rather have uber liberal D run the state then an R that in many ways looked more like a libertarian on many issues except certain social issues.
Sarvis was a libertarian in name only.

edit: Zundfolge beat me to it.

[lowbeyond]

this plus the republican establishment failed to financially back Ken C. and support his candidacy. Basically it sounds like the RINO establishment didn't like a tea party guy raining on their parade so they rather have uber liberal D run the state then an R that in many ways looked more like a libertarian on many issues except certain social issues.
Sarvis was a libertarian in name only.

edit: Zundfolge beat me to it.

yeppers

[avandelay]

this plus the republican establishment failed to financially back Ken C. and support his candidacy. Basically it sounds like the RINO establishment didn't like a tea party guy raining on their parade so they rather have uber liberal D run the state then an R that in many ways looked more like a libertarian on many issues except certain social issues.
Sarvis was a libertarian in name only.

edit: Zundfolge beat me to it.

Agreed. I'm not so sure that Ken C would have won even if Sarvis had been outed earlier in the cycle, but it does create angst when the Libertarian candidate is that far from Libertarian ideals and still manages to get 6% of the vote. For all I know he was pulling votes from McCaulliffe(sp?) because of the very stance for more gov't. As for Ken not getting the big R support from the party headquarters, it seems it is time to starve the beast and donate directly to our candidates instead of expecting the RNC to do it.

[def90]

The issue in VA is that there are good indications that Sarvis (the L candidate) was a shill candidate. He got a lot of campaign funding that can be tracked back to a Dem money bundler and his stance was, in many cases, for more government instead of less. Had the VA Libertarians actually looked at where the candidate stood instead of just looking at his party affiliation then he should have received far fewer votes that, in theory, would have gone to Ken C.

Even so how can anyone assume that those people that voted Libertarian would have voted Republican? they could just as easily voted Dem, for all you know the Libertarian candidate could have taken more votes from the Dem than the Rep. There is a poll out there somewhere that asked people that voted 3rd party if there were only 2 choices how would you have voted and the results came back split about the same as the regular election results so the 3rd party voters take votes from both the left and right. Not sure why everyone always assumes that they steal only from the right. I'm sure every time a Rep wins some Dem is sitting at home bitching how the 3rd party guy stole votes from his side of the vote.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/06/re...your-candidate

Here's an article that speaks of an exit poll of people that voted Sarvis.. If they had not voted Sarvis they would have voted McAuliffe at a 2 to 1 margin so Cucinelli still would have lost.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/06/do...cuccinelli-los

But to blame a major-party loss on third-party candidates is fundamentally mistaken. First off, it ignores data that the Libertarian pulled more votes from the Democratic candidate than he did from the Republican one—an exit poll of Sarvis voters showed that they would have voted for McAuliffe by a two-to-one margin over Cucinelli. Second, and far more important, it presumes that all potential votes somehow really “belong” to either Democrats or Republicans. That’s simply wrong and it does a real disservice to American politics.

Also in this race, Dem turnout was up 4% while Rep voter turnout was down 5%.

[avandelay]

Even so how can anyone assume that those people that voted Libertarian would have voted Republican? they could just as easily voted Dem, for all you know the Libertarian candidate could have taken more votes from the Dem than the Rep. There is a poll out there somewhere that asked people that voted 3rd party if there were only 2 choices how would you have voted and the results came back split about the same as the regular election results so the 3rd party voters take votes from both the left and right. Not sure why everyone always assumes that they steal only from the right. I'm sure every time a Rep wins some Dem is sitting at home bitching how the 3rd party guy stole votes from his side of the vote.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/06/re...your-candidate

Here's an article that speaks of an exit poll of people that voted Sarvis.. If they had not voted Sarvis they would have voted McAuliffe at a 2 to 1 margin so Cucinelli still would have lost.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/06/do...cuccinelli-los

But to blame a major-party loss on third-party candidates is fundamentally mistaken. First off, it ignores data that the Libertarian pulled more votes from the Democratic candidate than he did from the Republican one—an exit poll of Sarvis voters showed that they would have voted for McAuliffe by a two-to-one margin over Cucinelli. Second, and far more important, it presumes that all potential votes somehow really “belong” to either Democrats or Republicans. That’s simply wrong and it does a real disservice to American politics.

Also in this race, Dem turnout was up 4% while Rep voter turnout was down 5%.

I wasn't explaining away the loss, I was explaining the anger. There are certainly assumptions that the Sarvis voters would have gone with Ken C which the polls in your links seem to disprove, but there is no way to really know that for sure. What we do know is that Sarvis was getting a lot of campaign funding from a Dem money bundler and, looking at Sarvis's own statements. he wasn't very Libertarian in his nanny gov't stances.

[ChunkyMonkey]

I see a lot of Republicans pissed at Libertarians on other website comment sections, because the Republicans and Libertarians combined for 53% of the votes. The Republicans think those are all their votes. But I think those are all Libertarian votes. The Republicans cost the Libertarian the election.

If the Republicans don't want Libertarians stealing their votes, they need to become Libertarians. As a Libertarian, why would I ever vote for a Republican? They don't represent anything I want. If a Democrat gets elected, so what? It's just going to piss people off more which will in turn help them see things the Libertarian way. The more Democrats win, the more Libertarian conservatives will become. That's a good thing.

Low information voters do exist in all parties. In this case the libertards' candidate is as libertarian as Christie is a conservative.

I dont think the libertarians siphon any votes from the conservative -- not enough to eek out a win anyway. Most libertards I know will not vote for 'the lesser of 2 evils.' Meanwhile the socialists, communists, tree huggers, and so on will vote dems no matter what their dimwit says.