Poll: Support for tea party slips
Published September 26, 2013
by Tal Kopan, Politico, September 26, 2013.
Support for the tea party continues to fall among Americans, nearing all-time lows, according to a new poll Thursday.
Twenty-two percent of Americans call themselves tea party backers, the Gallup poll found, while 27 percent consider themselves opponents of the tea party. Fifty-one percent chose neither or have no opinion.
The level of support is a 10-point drop from November 2010, when a wave of pro-tea party sentiment helped Republicans take control of the House of Representatives, and is also down from 2012, when the GOP managed to hang on to the House and current tea party firebrand Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was elected.
Opposition has also declined since 2010, but by a narrower margin.
The 22 percent support mark approaches the all-time low recorded by the poll, which was a 21 percent level of support seen in September and November to December 2011.
As Republican infighting over the direction of the party continues, the poll also shows tea party supporters divided on their opinion of the party. Though tea partiers still view the Republican Party favorably, the margin is only 55 percent to 43 percent.
Gallup surveyed 1,510 American adults from Sept. 5 to 8 for the poll, which has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
September 26, 2013 at 7:55 am
TP Wohlford says:
So that full court press slander campaign, combined with the "matter of policy" IRS harassment, has started to pay off?
Betting if we asked about the TEA platform -- which is mostly composed of "balancing the budget" and limiting the size and scope of the government -- they'd poll a helluva lot better. And THAT is what worries Congress, or at least should.
