Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated

Tea party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, tend to be Republican, white, male, and married, and their strong opposition to the Obama administration is more rooted in political ideology than anxiety about their personal economic situation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters look like Republicans in many ways, but they hold more conservative views on a range of issues and tend to be older than Republicans generally. They are also more likely than Republicans as a whole to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”


(more)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html?hp

called a "political ideology".

at least not the more educated part. They can't spell.

People whom practice S&M are considered better educated for instance.

This "better educated" thing should be noted as not meaning much without specificity of what measure and how much. Often wealthy backers, whacked in most other measures, are sent to better schools and are considered better educate but not really in a good way.

And anytime a group is selected out it is often better than the population as a whole. That is just a meaningless statistic unless you take pains to measure specific knowledge or abilities with proven measures.

I didnt think that was possible.

Right, no one in need can afford to be a teabagger, though many don't seem to realize that. In this case "political ideology" is egotistical I-got-mine-Jack selfishness.

The Onion has taken over the NYT site.

I'm subscribing to the Enquirer.

than a bag of hammers.

to hold up misspelled signs. They sound a bit like the Leisure Class. But that may be just a theory.

Somebody needs to lose their job as a pollster.

:crazy:

NYT: "The nationwide telephone poll was conducted April 5-12 with 1,580 adults. For the purposes of analysis, Tea Party supporters were oversampled, for a total of 881, and then weighted back to their proper proportion in the poll."

Forensic Accounting for Dummies.

a third grader could see through the veil of racism

I mean, why else would they keep bashing Obama as a socialist (that being a very un-educated thing to say ironically)? :eyes:

There are well-educated Americans who are aware that they share a nation with others. And there are those who got through Harvard thanks to legacy admission/trust funds and feel that the world revolves around themselves.

i can see wealthy execs educated at expensive private schools supporting the tea party because they want tax cuts.

but this has been the case with Republicans for years. the ignorant social conservative religious types are the "activists" while the wealthy elitist republicans benefit from the pro corporate whore policies of the party.

I'll buy into 'older', 'whiter', 'republican'. 'Better educated'? Not so much.

on their signs.

:sarcasm:

Wait, 18%? All this media fuss over 18% of the population? Talk about "the squeaky wheel getting the grease!" And if they are older, I wonder how many of them claim to be "Goldwater Republicans"? Goldwater would be rolling over in his grave. I may have disagreed with him, but at least he would debate and listen and even *gasp* compromise instead of "Just Say No" or being a graduate of MSU (Making Shit Up).

They should be ashamed of themselves.

if they're so educated.

Maybe the Times meant they made it to 8th grade rather than 5th grade.

Seriously. I tend to think that people who are better educated know how to use a dictionary.

I blame video games. :sarcasm:

http://scienceblogs.com/scientificactivist/2010/04/this_is_a_very_dumb_poll.php

"...

Well, if you look at the actual the survey results and methods, you'll see that these "Tea Party supporters" are just people who answered affirmatively to the question "Do you consider yourself to be a supporter of the Tea Party movement, or not?" In fact, 78% (!!!) of these "supporters" have never attended a Tea Party rally or meeting or donated money to the Tea Party cause.

It's no wonder that these "Tea Party supporters" sound nothing like the Tea Party activists we've grown so familiar with... because they're not! Now, I'll grant that the Times' analysis never explicitly equates these two. But, especially by making statements like "Speculation and anecdotal evidence have often taken the place of concrete data about who supports the Tea Party movement, and the poll offers some surprising findings", they're really insinuating a lot.

In the end, these results are pretty uninteresting, since this poll just describes a large bloc of the Republican Party that has been in existence for a long time. (For a much more reasonable analysis of the poll, check out CBS's take.)

..."



The Times goes down in Fox-like flames....


Ugh.


:argh: