Nate Silver on the Tea Party movement in 538:
Both the Winston and Gallup polls also asked people about their affinity for the tea-party by ideological group:
Although the Tea Party gets pretty decent numbers among independents, support is smaller among self-proclaimed moderates; only about 15 percent of moderates support the tea-party (Gallup) and about 10 percent consider themselves a part of it (Wilson). Liberals, who support the tea-party in the high single digits, are actually pretty close to the moderates.
OK, so what did we learn here? I think the tea-party basically has three broad defining characteristics — to the extent we can define it at all:
1. It is conservative.
2. It is anti-establishment.
3. It has a somewhat amorphous and nonspecific goals.The first factor explains why the tea-party potentially does well among both Republicans (almost all of whom are conservative these days) as well as conservative independents. But, the second factor introduces some tension. While, on the one hand, Republicans tend to be more conservative than independents, on the other hand they tend to support the two-party establishment while independents — in broad strokes — are fed up with it. I would guess that if you looked at voters who were both independent and conservative, their support for the tea-party would be at least as high as among Republican conservatives.
Although we can infer that support for the tea party is not very high among non-conservative independents or among Democrats and liberals, the movement does get some support (especially among liberal independents as opposed to liberal Democrats). Why? Because the tea-party has many different faces.
