43% Tea Party Activists Are Dems/ Independents (And Other Tea Party Facts The Mainstream Media Wont Tell You)

If you listen to most of the mainstream media, the Tea Party movement is comprised of the extreme right racist wing of the Republican Party, organizing to find a way to destroy the presidency of the first African-American to hold the office.

The Winston Group, a Washington DC research company, conducted research on people who identified themselves as members of the Tea Party and found profile much different than what the media has been telling you.wont

First of all they are not all Republicans, 43% of people who identify themselves as members of the Tea Party movement are Independents, Democrats (plus 1% other). More than a third of tea party members consider themselves, liberals or moderates. They tend to be older than the voters on the whole, tend to come from middle-income households and are slightly more likely to be male than the overall electorate.

What most fair people knew and the media wont tell you is that what binds this diverse group together is a commitment to economic conservatism, they are very focused on the economy and jobs: 36 percent say it is their top issue, but are also concerned with the fiscal deficit and low taxes.

The economy remains a top priority, but Put simply, the Tea Party movement espouses economic conservative values. This impacts their priorities in terms of policy. When asked to name their top issue, rather than prioritize a variety of items, Tea Party members again assert their economic conservatism. While voters overall are extremely concerned with the economy and jobs, Tea Party members are over twice as likely to concern about the deficit is pronounced with this group, underscoring the unifying thread of economic conservatism that runs through the Tea Party movement. Additional questions illustrate that the Tea Party movement strongly links deficit with economic outcomes and as a result, the concern about the deficit/spending is a subset of concerns under economy and jobs.

Tea Party members are very dissatisfied with the current direction of the country, the policies of the administration, and those currently in office, and as a result the Tea Party movement is breaking heavily in favor of the Republican Party. This is a movement defined by its focus not just on the policies of economic conservatism but on the desired economic outcomes.

In other words these Tea Party members are not ideologues, they promote fiscal conservatism not because of party or political theory, but because they they know that it will lead to jobs. Something that cannot be said of the tea party opponents, who see the Tea Party movement as the only thing standing in the way of changing America into a Progressive utopia where individuality is lost in a great sea of shared mediocrity.


The Full Study Follows:

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