The Libertarian effect on the House

So to follow up on the whole Libertarian/Speaker thing from last week, I listened to the brief interview RG Ratcliffe did with Texas LP Chair Wes Benedict, who among other things spoke about the LP’s growing influence on Legislative races over the past few cycles. That sounded like something quantifiable, so I went back through the election results since 2000, to see how often an LP candidate ran in a race with both a Dem and an R, and how often that LP candidate’s presence had an effect.

First things first, between 2000 and 2004, there were a grand total of 24 LP candidates in races that had both major parties, with 2004 being a low point; only three three-way races that year. Of course, one of them was in HD50, where now-Rep. Mark Strama knocked off freshman Republican Jack Stick with less than 50% of the vote. Strama went on to win re-election in 2006 with over 60% in a straight-up two-way race. I think it’s safe to say that he’d be in the House today one way or another.

2006 was a completely different story: A grand total of 46 races, nearly twice as many as the previous three cycles combined, featured a D, an R, and an L. Now, most of these races were not particularly close – the average winner had over 58% of the vote, and won by nearly 20 points. By my lights, 20 of these races could be considered close. Let’s take a look at them, starting with the ones in which the winner achieved a majority of the vote:

Dist        Winner    PCT    Margin  Lib
========================================
11        Hopson  50.99      4.88    Y
12     McReynolds 55.58     13.51    N
35     Toureilles 52.69     10.72    N
47        Bolton  50.24      4.71    N
52        Krusee  50.44      6.24    Y
96        Zedler  52.46      8.17    Y
97        Mowery  55.93     15.11    Y
102       Goolsby  51.93      6.08    N
105  Harper-Brown  55.08     13.98    Y
107        Vaught  50.10      3.41    Y
114      Hartnett  55.58     13.28    N
133        Murphy  55.77     14.04    N
134         Cohen  54.53     11.27    Y
144        Talton  56.59     15.73    N

“PCT” is the percentage of the vote the winner got, “Margin” is by how much they won, and “Lib” refers to whether or not there is a Libertarian Party candidate this year. Some of these races aren’t on anyone’s radar as being potentially competitive now, such as HDs 105, 114, and 134. Yvonne Gonzalez Toureilles in HD35 is unopposed. The Lone Star Project identifies Hopson (HD11), Bolton (HD47), and Vaught (HD107) as Democratic incumbents to watch, along with Dan Barrett in HD97, who won a special election last year after Anna Mowery retired, but not McReynolds in HD12. The others – HDs 52, 96, 102, 133, and 144 – are all hot races.

The more interesting case is the races where the winner had less than a majority. There were six of these in 2006:

Dist        Winner    PCT    Margin Needed  Lib
===============================================
17          Cook  48.91      1.03  33.90    Y
32        Garcia  48.25      2.10  31.21    Y
85        Heflin  49.01      0.74  36.32    N
93       Pierson  49.60      2.66  11.33    Y
106       England  49.16      1.11  30.12    Y
118        Farias  48.24      3.96  23.57    Y

Here, “Needed” means the percentage of the Libertarian Party candidate’s vote the winner needed to get a majority. By this measure, it’s hard to say that Paula Pierson or Joe Farias were significantly helped by the LP candidate. Kirk England has switched to the Democrats. Pierson is on the Lone Star Project’s watch list, but her opponent has little money. Neither Farias nor England are considered endangered. The others are all hot races, and along with Barrett’s HD97 probably represent the top four Republican takeover targets. I’d say Joe Heflin, who had the closest win, and Juan Garcia, in whose race the LP candidate won 5.58% of the vote, were genuinely helped by the presence of the third-party candidate, the others not so much.

The most interesting thing to me, though, is which of these races have LP candidates and which don’t. I confess, I’m at a loss to explain why Suzanna Hupp would call the hopefuls in HDs 9 and 64 to ask them to stand down, but not HD17’s Alan Duesterhoft or HD32’s Lenard Nelson, just to name two. Maybe she hadn’t gotten around to them by the time that story broke, I don’t know. It just looks like a strange way to prioritize to me.

One last thing: The 24 LP candidates from 2000 to 2004 averaged 2.68% of the vote in these races, while the 2006 candidates garnered 3.56%. By that measure, I have to agree with Benedict’s statement about their growing influence, though I think a combination of anti-Republican-but-not-yet-pro-Democratic feeling that year helped as well. My suspicion is that the Democratic candidates will do a better job this year of converting anti-R votes into actual votes for them. As with the Caucus endorsement backlash hypothesis, I’ll be checking that later this year.

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