Poll: Tea Party candidates come in last

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2010/02/poll-tea-party-candidates-come-in-last/1

Feb 09, 2010

Poll: Tea Party candidates come in last

Could the Tea Party movement be losing ground?

Days after Sarah Palin headlined the nation's first Tea Party convention, a Rasmussen Reports poll released today shows that a generic "Tea Party candidate" would come in third in a theoretical three-way congressional contest.

The poll found that 36% of voters would support a Democratic candidate on a generic ballot, 25% would back the Republican and 17% would go for the Tea Party pick. Twenty-three percent of respondents are undecided.

In early December, the same poll showed the Tea Party in second place and the GOP in third. Unchanged between the polls, according to Rasmussen, is that 41% of voters have a favorable view of the conservative movement.

The poll of 1,000 likely voters was taken Feb. 7-8, just after the national Tea Party convention in Nashville. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

It's a split from the Republicans, they were already part of the base.