It's difficult to ever find this sort of hard data in LP News, in the fundraising letters that come out of national, or from other party sources. (At least *I've* been unaware of a ready source for such data; no doubt some party wonk will respond with a message along the lines of "state membership numbers have always been readily available via ___!") But a delegation chairs manual prepared for the upcoming LP May 22-25 national convention (the document has lots of convention info worth checking out) and pointed out by Marc Montoni (thanks Marc!) contains a chart on pages 18 and 19 showing the membership numbers for each state in 2005, and 2007:
http://www.lp.org/archives/delegation_chairs_manual_2008.pdf
During that period, it's revealed, about 3/5ths of the states lost members, including California, Florida, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and most of the other states with the highest membership numbers. The LP, in short, has not been doing well.
I personally attribute this mainly to the reasons given in Grassroots Libertarians Caucus Key Values #1, #3, #4, and #5:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/grassrootslibertarians/
Hopefully we can turn it around. Some people might contend this has already been accomplished, as membership numbers are now apparently on an upswing. However, that is normal for the period preceding a presidential election. The underlying issues noted above have largely not been addressed.
I wonder how much of the membership losses of 2005-2007 can be attributed simply to older Libertarians dying off and their numbers not being replaced by new young members. We've got to increase our appeal to young people, and to do that, I believe we must learn the lessons of the Ron Paul rEVOLution and inspire them with a radical, idealistic focus, adopt more of a grassroots, DIY, bottom-up ethos, and change the culture of the party to make it more youth/activity oriented. We desperately need more exciting, less upscale conventions and functions, more youth-oriented materials, activities, and issue emphasis, and more music and art.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))