Comments on: We Have Seen the Tea Party, and It Is Us

By: Matthew Dickinson

Matthew Dickinson — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:33:40 +0000

Conor – I have not read the NYTimes poll in any detail, but I saw more overlap demographically between their results and Gallup’s than I did differences. Interestingly, the Gallup poll incited a lot of pushback on the Left to the premise that the Tea Party, demographically speaking, is fairly representative of Americans more generally. They seem to have ignored the other finding, which is that the movement is distinctly conservative. I’ve now come across several studies of the movement, so I’ll try to post another comment on it as soon as grading permits. But the Tea Party movement has clearly touched a political nerve, which is interesting in itself – certainly the comments above suggest the range of reactions it is inciting.

By: Conor Shaw

Conor Shaw — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:51:50 +0000

Gallup’s results appear to be somewhat different from the NY times/CBS poll just released (see http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/14/us/politics/20100414-tea-party-poll-graphic.html?ref=politics#tab=9 )

Is this due to differences in methodology or is one of the two simply wrong?

By: Kevin Evans

Kevin Evans — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 07:13:31 +0000

“History suggests, however, that if the Tea Party movement continues to grow, the passions that fuel it will likely be coopted, perhaps in watered-down form, by one of the two existing parties.”

I think you’re absolutely right on this point, Rapoport and Stone have a good book on this topic. Any readers of this blog that are interested in how the Republicans absorbed much of the Perot constituency should check it out: http://books.google.com/books?id=LpBe1psZNk0C&lpg=PP1&ots=nZgyEWsHQn&dq=walt%20stone%20ross%20perot&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false — the theory in the book speaks to what might plausibly happen in this new situation.

Thanks for the post, I’ve been waiting to see some survey results on this subject.

By: Steven Gubb

Steven Gubb — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:17:13 +0000

As is stated, the Tea Party movement is a cross section of America. People support or participate in the Tea Party for the reasons stated, a more or less traditional American response to big government, big government programs, big taxes, big waste, and seemingly non stop government spending, especially in bad economic times. The reaction is “throw the bums out”. That’s nothing new.

There is no difference between republicrats and democans. Voters are fed up. All the Tea Party has to do is to remain center right, and independents will flock to them. Extreme politics will not play here. That Obama got elected was more a function of total media support of Obama, America’s fatigue with war, and the not to be underestimated
fact of the federal government screwing up the economy. Remember, the government is as much to blame for this economic collapse as is Wall Street. Again, do not underestimate the media simply rolling over for Obama.

Since the President insists on continuing to spend money that doesn’t exist, amass unheard of levels of debt, and flat out lie about how everything is fine economically, that cross section of America is screaming out “enough”. However, no one, neither democrat nor republican, is really listening. Why should they? They are the same, have been for years now, and all spend and spend.

A commission has been appointed by the President to make recommendations on how to cut spending. They are to report back to him in December. Everyone on the commission is over 70. We ought to get some great, new ideas out of this bunch! For this they need until December? Why not JUST STOP SPENDING! ROLL BACK THE FEDERAL BUDGET TO 1995, or 1990, and that’s the budget. Everything else gets cut. That won’t take until December to figure out. How tough is that?

Of course, what is more telling than the sudden decision of more and more incumbents to “retire” at this time? Who retires? They stay in Congress until they die, because it is such a great gig, and such a great scam. Where else do you get to make rules that you can exempt yourself from? Whatever happened to equal protection under the law, and no one being above the law? Like I said, nice gig.

Oh, btw, I am a 57 yr old Middlebury parent, for what that’s worth. Thanks for allowing me my $.02.

By: Matthew Dickinson

Matthew Dickinson — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 02:42:41 +0000

Jeff – I can’t be sure, since I don’t have access to the questions or crosstabs but I think the Tea Party sample is drawn from the overall Gallup sample of all adults, so it’s not clear to me that even if the overall sample of adults oversamples non-hispanic whites (the margin of error of the total sample is about 4%) what that means for the in-sample comparison between Tea Partiers and non-tea partiers. There still may be no difference between them, racially. Unless Gallup oversampled from Tea Partiers, however, all the numbers for the subgroup of Tea Parties have to be taken with a grain of salt, that is, they are likely to have larger margins of error.