are there any libertarian US states?

[cwelsch]

Outside Atlanta is libertarian, but the South in general is horrible for orthodox libertarians, and great for people who confuse liberty with the confederate-style government.

NH, NV, AK, WY, MT, ID and CO all have good cases for being libertarian, but that's just relative to the other states.  I have a good measure here.  The following graph is a measure of top five states in the libertarian popular vote (presidential race) for every election since 1976 (since they were only on 2 states in 1972).



I'd probably dimiss the outliers that only did it once, but the rest are leigitmately fairly libertarian, so:

Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, New Hampshire are all somewhat libertarian.

Vermont has elected one libertarian state legislator, NH four, Alaska three.  I'd put Vermont and Maine on the list, especially since they HATE gun control.  NH hates taxes.

I'd also say California pre-1990 was very libertarian.  Reagan fit very well there.

[cwelsch]

Libertarians?!  You'd have to be one hell of a serious plutocrat to take the Libertarians seriously.  Those guys are way too far right even for the rightist extremists.  Want to return to Thomas Jefferson's America.  Want complete liberty but are unwilling to spend even a dime on the maintenance of a standing army and navy.  No thanks.  I'd not be so quick to replace the two big corporate-controlled fatcat parties with those guys.  Alaskans may be far right compared with most of us, but they're not looney.  Same with New Hampshire folks.  There is no state where the majority of the population thinks like marie antionette.  There's plenty of polling data to back this up, and even the most libertarian of Americans are a long way from Thomas Jefferson's ideals.  

Folks who want the government off their backs and out of their bedrooms, and who think it's silly to argue over gay marriage, and who want lower taxes, and think they have the right to shoot guns, smoke pot, snort coke, do prostitutes, etc., will not be satisfied with either the DNC or the RNC.  But, depending on what issues they care about, they'll take the lesser of those two big monsters.  Just look at 2004.  In a nation of 293 million people, the best we could come up with was Bush versus Gore.  That ought to be a source of extreme national humiliation.  But was it?  Not really.  Not when you consider that 97% of those who voted voted either for tweedle-dee or tweedle-dum.  That's the reality.  I can't imagine Alaskans jumping the GOP ship.  Maybe NH, but even if they do it'll be toward the Democrats' vessel and not to the ship of destitution known as the Libertarian Party.

There is no Libertarian state.  There is no almost libertarian state.  Thomas Jefferson died a long time ago.  For better or worse, technology progresses onward and no agrarianist will change that.  Alaskans may not be high-tech, but they don't want mass starvation, bad roads, bad schools, and general lawlessness either.

This is about equivalent to say all Democrats are Stalinists and Republicans are Nazis.

I'm not agrarian, I'm anti-agrarian if anything.

[cwelsch]

The way I see it we have two problems in this thread.

1) Thinking the whole state has to be libertarian to qualify here.  It doesn't.  Colorado is the state where the LP was founded, it has libertarian elements.  As a whole, there are plenty of non-libertarians in CO, but overall it has more libertarians than most US states.  By that measure, it's libertarian.  Same for Maine and Vermont, where despite high taxes they have smaller and less intrusive government.  Vermont is weird, it's tax hikes are only about a decade old, but it's the home of Ethan Allen, and it did elect a libertarian to office.  By that measure alone, it's got libertarians.

2) Not agreeing what libertarian is.  In global terms, virtually every American is a moderate libertarian.  More specifically, polls show that 16% of the country tests libertarian on the World's Smallest Political Quiz.  I don't think you HAVE to be idealistic, since I know plenty of cynical libertarians.  You just have to want less government in most areas currently in the political mainstream.  And about 16% agrees with that, Rasmussen showed.