A few years back a group of libertarians fed up with what they saw as the ever encroaching power of government founded the Free State Project. The idea was to pick some small, already libertarianish state and convince 20,000 libertarians to move there, in the hopes that by concentrating their voting power, they would be able to refashion at least the state government along libertarian lines. After some initial discussion and voting, New Hampshire was settled on as the state of choice.
This morning, while I was building up the courage to get out of bed and face the cold, cruel world, I got to thinking: New Hampshire, in addition to being a small, liberty-loving state, also has the earliest presidential primary in the nation. This means that the voters of New Hampshire have a disproportionate influence on who gets the presidential nomination. Now suppose that, prior to 2008, the Free State Project had managed to achieve its goal of moving 20,000 libertarians to New Hampshire. And suppose, what seems plausible, that the vast majority of those 20,000 had voted for Ron Paul in the Republican primary in 2008. What effect would that have had on the course of the election campaign?
Turns out the answer is: not much. According to CNN, John McCain beat Mitt Romney in the New Hampshire primary 88,466 votes to 75,343. Ron Paul got 18,303 votes. Even if all 20,000 of the Free Staters had voted for the good doctor, he still would have had less than half the votes of the winner, coming in a distant third. That would have gotten him an extra delegate, but it wouldn’t have radically changed the course of the race, for good or for ill.
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