libertarians

[angus]

As I recall, Libertarian Senate Candidate (and gun nut) Carla Howell received as much popular support as did the Republican Senate candidate for Massachusetts senator in November 2000.  That is, Kennedy received something like 3/4 of the vote and the remainder was split evenly between L and R.  Boston is the college town.  But the numbers I just gave were statewide, so you'd need to compare, say, Lowell and Fitchburg, to Boston and Cambridge.  Nevertheless, since more than half of the population of that state live in or near the College Town, it's a pretty good bit of evidence that Libertarians received, in that particular race, as much as the Republican in the nation's premier college town.

[angus]

Beet,
As my Nederlande colleague, Arjan Gijsbertsen, used to say, "In the Dutch system, if 9 people like hip-hop and one person likes jazz, you play hip-hop 9 out of every ten songs, and one out of every ten songs will be jazz.  In the US system, if 9 people like hip-hop and one person likes jazz, you play hip-hop ten out of every ten songs."

Apt metaphor, I think, for proportional representation as opposed to winner-take-all.

[angus]

You have listened to one too many Howard Dean speeches.