The run of the mill libertarian will of course on full principle vote for the libertarian party. Gary Johnson is a great guy, and where applicable, downticket races have a good chance of succeeding.
But there is a separate branch of libertarians who view the Harm Principle as the principle creed and understand things differently.
The Harm Principle states: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
From most libertarians I encounter view this to mean that the government can non seize property, and view taxation as theft, but accept that a police officer can shoot a man if that man is actively firing upon others just as a citizen non-officer can fire upon such man.
Some interpret what mills is saying to be simply an assumption of justice. That the harm principle denies the government imposing any ruling on an individual that is done unjustly, and without merit.
In other words, the government can't just select an individual at random and punish them for a crime without cause. It also can't randomly decide who's house to impose imminent domain on, or randomly decide to tax an individual at 100%.
Mills includes the last line, the prevent harm to others. This part of the sentence tells us that it is perfectly within the governments right to impose harm upon an individual if it means preventing the harm to others.
Again most libertarians view this to mean that you can shoot a man shooting men, but there are other things that meet this criteria as well.
Social security is an example. You can argue how it is run, any abuse of the system, et cetera just as you can in any private business, but what you can not argue is that it does not fulfill the Harm Principle. It harms an individual that is working by taxing them in order to prevent harm by providing an income to those who have retired. Beyond this you can argue that social security harms you when you are young, but prevents harm when you become young.
Yes, having social security in place promotes people to use it as retirement instead of insurance, but that does not change the fact that it is still a libertarian sanctioned program as it only harms to prevent harm. It is Just.
There are some social programs that do not prevent harm. At least not to citizens.
There are many preservation projects, such as national parks (teddy Roosevelt) that do not prevent harm to citizens by harming an individual via taxation, but, and this is up for debate, it does prevent harm to others, others being wildlife.
2016 has been a very interesting campaign so far.
Rand had a lot of support going into 2016. He had the coattails of his father and he was well liked with good favorability.
But two things happened. The libertarians in name only flocked to trump, and the left leaning libertarians as mentioned above (pro-social programs that prevent harm), have flocked to Bernie, and all that was left was right leaning libertarians that flocked to Cruz as they also tend to be highly religious. So the people that were left for rand were the right leaning libertarians who are either atheist, or agnostic (with of course still a few religious), and that makes his supporter the minority party, republican, and the minority faction, libertarian, and the minority withing that minority, right leaning libertarian not in name only.
Good on ya guys. For me, I'm a left leaning libertarian, as far as Nordic capitalist. As long as a tax on me prevents harm, it satisfy that principle, and whether I like it or not, it is Just.