We find 9 to 13 percent libertarians in the Gallup surveys, 14 percent in the Pew Research Center Typology Survey, and 13 percent in the American National Election Studies . . . . Libertarians preferred George W. Bush over Al Gore by 72 to 20 percent, but Bush's margin dropped in 2004 to 59-38 over John Kerry. Congressional voting showed a similar swing from 2002 to 2004. Libertarians apparently became disillusioned with Republican overspending, social intolerance, civil liberties infringements, and the floundering war in Iraq.
Immigrations is another important issue where Democrats are probably a better fit than Republicans with Libertarian ideology.
Libertarians and the Religious Right are uncomfortable bedfellows, but the Religous Right is becoming a larger and larger share of the GOP party machine's ranks.
Democrats favor both more taxation and more government spending than Libertarians would like, but Republicans favor similar levels of spending, financed with debt which is simply a form of deferred taxation. Democrats have also grown more nuanced on the issue of government regulation of business, focusing on true externalities and fraud, than at sometimes in the past. Democrats are also coming around to recognize, as libertarians long have felt, that existing zoning laws have serious negative impacts, and particularly in the West, Democrats have given less emphasis to gun control, a libertarian hot button issue.
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