To Cross-Endorse or Not Cross-Endorse?

By Mark E. Glogowski

The 2020 New York State General Election results were analyzed to determine whether Libertarian Candidates in the Congressional, Senate, and Assembly races had a positive or a negative impact on the number of Libertarian Party enrollments. The impact of cross-endorsement on the number of new enrollments was studied. The Data from June 3, 2020 to

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark E. Glogowski
• Release date: Mar 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087952079

Mark E. Glogowski

The author, Mark E. Glogowski, Ph.D. earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Rochester, a Master of Science from Rochester Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. Living in upstate New York with his wife, Kathleen, he enjoys the company of two daughters, a son-in law, and an energetic grandchild. After 47 years of research experience, and having held leadership positions in several organizations, clubs, and committees, including serving as Town Leader for a political party, he considers himself to be a typical retired professional American. Shortly after retiring, he ran in a primary for a town office against another candidate and came face to face with a problem that every candidate has to confront: The voting public’s apathy and lack of knowledge and understanding of politics. He lost. This motivated the author to use a research approach to study the problem of voter apathy. His goal was to find a way to get an individual to quickly determine for themself what they politically believe, then to compare their beliefs to the political party philosophies, and then to evaluate the candidates running for office. Dr Glogowski believes that with the proper tools it is possible for the voter to confidently choose a candidate that will represent the voter’s views on every issue. He found a set of tools and tested them. Having presented the tools to numerous adult education classes, the positive responses motivated him to write this Political Primer. The author believes that, by the time you finish reading The Political Primer, you will have an unambiguous understanding of politics, and its purpose will be clear. You will never view politics the same again.

Book preview

To Cross-Endorse or Not Cross-Endorse?

To Cross-Endorse or Not Cross-Endorse?

To Cross-Endorse or Not Cross-Endorse?

Mark E. Glogowski, Ph.D.

Mark E. Glogowski

Contents

1 INTRODUCTION

2 PART I. Section 1. ANALYSIS OF CONGRESSIONAL RACES: Impact on Libertarian Party Enrollment

3 PART I. Section 2. ANALYSIS OF CONGRESSIONAL RACES: Impact on Libertarian Presidential Vote Count

4 PART II. ANALYSIS OF THE 2020 NYS SENATE DISTRICT RACES

5 PART III. ANALYSIS OF THE NYS ASSEMBLY DISTRICT RACES

6 A STRATEGY FOR THE FUTURE

7 PART 1, Section 1 - Appendix 1,2, & 3

8 PART I, Section 2, Appendix

9 PART II, Appendix

1

INTRODUCTION

To Cross-Endorse or Not Cross-Endorse: That is the Question

This is a decades long topic of debate that has never been definitively decided. The two sides argue something like the following:

Cross-endorsement of other political party candidates helps the Libertarian Party grow.

No! Cross-endorsement has caused the party to stagnate for its entire existence. We should only run our own candidates

Running Libertarian candidates who continually get low percentage vote counts is a waste of time and resources.

And the debate goes on, and on, and on ... .

For years the Libertarian Party has been supporting other political parties by cross-endorsing their candidates. Should the Libertarian Party continue to cross-endorse other political party candidates?

This investigation was undertaken to determine whether any of these claims can be backed up by fact. But, before getting into the nuts and bolts of the New York State (NYS) 2020 General Election analysis, a little background.

The 2014 General Election.

An analysis of the 2014 General Election results was undertaken in order to determine whether the existence of Libertarian Party county chapters were a benefit or a hinderance to the Libertarian's gubernatorial candidates. The Libertarian Party's growth was pretty much flat for decades, with only ten existing county chapters in 2014. It was hoped the analysis of the 2014 General Election would produce a quantifiable justification for the existence of county chapters and that the information would motivate the LPNY members to create additional chapters in the remaining 52 counties.

It was during that analysis that this author began to question the impact the cross-endorsements had on the Libertarian Party. The data suggested that cross-endorsement was not only not beneficial to the Libertarian Party, it was harmful. In 2014, the Libertarian Party ran four statewide candidates (Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and Comptroller), a cross-endorsed Republican Congressional candidate, and three Assembly candidates.

The analysis of that year’s election results was focused on the  gubernatorial votes by Congressional District. Congressional District races are the largest of the multi-county races in NYS, and the New York State (NYS) Board of Elections (BoE) provided the elections results of the gubernatorial race by Congressional District, broken down by county. The BoE does not provide gubernatorial vote counts by NYS Senate or Assembly District.

The analysis very clearly identified some general trends: One of those was that as the percent of votes received by the Republican gubernatorial candidate increased, the percent of votes received by the Libertarian gubernatorial candidate, and other Libertarian candidates, also increased. This pattern did not hold for the three counties included in the third Congressional District. In those three counties, which involved the cross-endorsed Republican Congressional candidate, the percent of Libertarian gubernatorial votes appeared not to increase, but to decrease as the percent of Republican gubernatorial votes increased. [The pertinent section of that report is reproduced in Part I, Section 1, Appendix 1].

Was this an anomaly? After all, it was just one congressional race, and there were no Libertarian candidates running for a congressional seat in any other Congressional District that year. There was nothing to compare the results to.

In This Report

In 2020 there were eleven (11) Libertarian candidates involved in NYS congressional races. The analysis of the 2020 General Election was undertaken from a Congressional, NYS Senate, and NYS Assembly perspective.

Part I of this analysis focuses on the congressional races in two different ways.

Section 1 provides an analysis of the impact of the congressional races on the growth of the Libertarian Party as determined by the increase in enrollment during the campaign season (June 3, 2020 to December 21, 2020).

Section 2 addresses the impact of the congressional races on the number of votes that were obtained by the Libertarian presidential candidate.

Part II, the NYS Senate races are analyzed to determine their impact on the growth of the LP during the campaign season.

Part III, the NYS Assembly races are analyzed to determine their impact on the growth of the LP during the campaign season.

2

PART I. Section 1. ANALYSIS OF CONGRESSIONAL RACES: Impact on Libertarian Party Enrollment

The Data

To perform this analysis, the voter registration record for the enrolled NYS Libertarians was obtained from the NYS BoE on June 3, 2020 and on December 21, 2020. These two dates were chosen primarily because the June 3, 2020 date was presumed to be prior to the start of the serious campaign efforts of most candidates. The December 21, 2020 record was obtained because most of those who would have joined the LP because of a candidate’s campaign would have done so either during the campaign or within the