Average Tea Party member: Rural upscale conservative male

[ck4829]

Activists in the Tea Party movement tend to be male, rural, upscale, and overwhelmingly conservative, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday also indicates that Tea Party activists would vote overwhelmingly Republican in a two-party race for Congress. The party's GOP leanings, the poll suggests, may pose a problem for the Tea Party movement if it tries to turn itself into a third party to compete with the two major parties in this year's general election.

"If the Tea Party runs its own candidates for U.S. House, virtually every vote the Tea Party candidate gets would be siphoned from the GOP candidate, potentially allowing the Democrats to win in districts that they might have otherwise lost," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "While the concept of an independent third party is extremely popular, most Americans, including most Tea Party supporters, don't favor a third party that would result in a winner who disagrees with them on most major issues."

According to the survey, roughly 11 percent of all Americans say they have actively supported the Tea Party movement, either by donating money, attending a rally, or taking some other active step to support the movement. Of this core group of Tea Party activists, 6 of 10 are male and half live in rural areas.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/17/tea.party.poll/

[onehandle]

1. Upscale? Wal-Mart has a martini bar now? nt

[maxsolomon]

2. 1 in 10 americans are selfish jerks?

i already knew that.

[T Wolf]

3. The baggers will not run against the pukes. They will fall in line just as the anti-choice

cretins have done for decades.

Speculation that they will splinter off and somehow damage the puke electoral chances is about as useless a "hope" as that which we were suckered into believing during the last election.

[Dappleganger]

4. and WHITE

Don't forget that.

[provis99]

8. and Southern, and neo-Confederate

I'll bet those crazed Texas seccessionists are all Tea Baggers.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. CNN forgot to include 'white' in their description.

[thunder rising]

6. here's the breeding ground. US high school graduation rate climbs to 69.2 percent.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2009/0609/p02s13-usgn.html

[MidwestTransplant]

7. Somebody on TPM posted re the high rate of college grads:

Attending anger management classes doesn't count as a college education.

[LeftinOH]

9. As long as the GOP throws them a few bones (gay marriage, abortion, guns), they'll fall in line.

[KingFlorez]

10. No surprise

They just want to keep this big, ugly melting from bubbling over what used to be a nice, WHITE, stove.