A new Reuters poll found that 19 percent of Americans consider themselves to be libertarian, but despite increasingly anti-big government sentiments, many respondents say they want to keep around federal safety net programs.
"One in five Americans consider themselves libertarian, with younger adults being the most likely to adopt the label," according to Reuters. "Among adults aged 18 to 29, 32 percent consider themselves libertarian. Just 12 percent of Americans age 60 or older consider themselves libertarian."
When broken down among party lines, 22 percent of Democrats said they consider themselves libertarians, which is interestingly more than the 18 percent of Republicans who said the same. Twenty-five percent of independents said they are libertarian.
According to Matt Welch, editor of the libertarian magazine Reason, young people are more likely to consider themselves "free agents" who gravitate toward libertarianism. "They don't belong to churches, they don't belong to things," he told Reuters.
The results could spell trouble for libertarian-minded Republican presidential candidates like Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, both who have heavily campaigned on reducing the size of the federal government.
"While many Americans, particularly Republicans and independents, favor decreasing government's size and reach, specific policies for doing so are far less popular," according to Reuters.
Fifty-one percent of Republicans said they support abolishing the U.S. federal income tax, compared to 39 percent who disagree. Among independents, 47 percent said they favor abolishing the income tax, while 38 percent were opposed.
When asked if the state government should have more authority than the federal government, 60 percent of Republicans said it should, while 28 percent said the federal government should have more power. Independents were evenly divided on the issue, according to Reuters.
"But when asked about ending specific functions of the federal government, voters of all political stripes, including many Republicans, were less receptive," Reuters wrote.
Almost 80 percent of Republicans opposed getting rid of programs such as Social Security and Medicare, while 64 percent opposed eliminating aid programs for the poor, like food stamps and Medicaid.
As for the Food and Drug Administration, 47 percent of Republicans said they did not agree with abolishing or significantly reducing its authority, compared to 42 percent who said they would like to see the agency dismantled.
Seventy-seven percent of independents opposed doing away with Social Security and Medicare, 70 percent opposed eliminating Medicaid and food stamps, and 56 percent were against the idea of abolishing the FDA.
According to world-renowned linguist, political commentator and MIT professor Noam Chomsky, the polls results better align with the traditional European definition of libertarianism, rather than what libertarianism has morphed into in the U.S.
"Libertarianism in the United States has a meaning which is almost the opposite of what it has in the rest of the world traditionally. Here, libertarian means ultra right-wing capitalist. In the European tradition, libertarian means socialist. So anarchism was sometimes called libertarian socialism, a large wing of anarchism, so we have to be a little careful about terminology," Chomsky explains.
"In America, libertarian means 'extreme advocate of totally tyranny.' It means power ought to be given into the hands of private, unaccountable tyrannies - even worse than state tyrannies because [in them] the public has some kind of role."
The online poll of 4,770 adults was conducted between April 10 and 24, and has a credibility interval of 1.6 percentage points.
