Rasmussen Research, an independent polling organization, recently performed one of the few large, scientific polls of American political attitudes based on the World’s Smallest Political Quiz which attempts to gauge political views more broadly than just liberal, conservative and moderate.
The interesting thing is that although the poll found that, based on their answers to policy questions, 16 percent of Americans are libertarian oriented, only 2 percent of those polled self-identified themselves as libertarians.
In fact among those who self-identified as libertarians, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan each received almost as much support as Libertarian Party candidate Harry Browne. Something’s wrong when even a majority of self-identified libertarians reject the Libertarian Party.