Balkinization  

Monday, November 01, 2010

Political Attitudes of Tea Party Supporters

Nate Persily

In anticipation of the reports tomorrow of the influence of Tea Party supporters on the election, I am placing up on the web results from a survey conducted by Steve Ansolabehere, Jamal Greene, and me over the past year. The survey, which is available here, included two waves, one in June-July 2009 (of about 1600 respondents) and another in June 2010, in which 1000 from the original sample were reinterviewed. The 2010 survey asked if the respondent supported the Tea Party. Given the length of the survey, the results are too difficult to summarize in a blog post. However, the break down of Tea Party supporters and non-supporters is available here. In the back-of-the-envelope regressions I have performed, it seems to me that the defining characteristic of Tea Party supporters is their disapproval of Obama. Although partisanship, fear of "big government", and concern about immigration are statistically significant variables predicting Tea Party support, disapproval of Obama remains a powerful factor even once all such variables (plus other demographic and ideological variables) are added.

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