Poll: The sagging popularity of the tea parties - from 41/39 favorable in March to 36/50 now.

Poll: The sagging popularity of the tea parties

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll includes questions about the tea parties that have the nascent movement's popularity slipping badly. Overall, since the last poll, the percentage of Americans who hold an unfavorable view of the movement has jumped from 39 percent to 50 percent. The leading edge of that has been a collapse in support from 18-29-year-olds. In March, they had a positive, 43-38 view of the tea parties. They've swung hard to a negative view, 27-60.



One result that surprises me: a seeming tumble in tea party support from white Southerners. In March, only 30 percent had an unfavorable view of the movement. Now, it's 45 percent.

I don't think this is really a sign of anti-incumbent anger ending -- the results on voter views of incumbents dispel that notion. Since the last poll, however, we have had two months of news about tea party-identified Republicans winning their primaries or leading in them, which has started to diminish the independent brand of the movement. We had, in Rand Paul, a candidate nationally identified as a "tea party" icon, who quickly identified himself and the movement with philosophical but politically toxic ruminations about whether America still needed anti-discrimination laws. The dip in support is not intense -- it's mostly from people with newly "somewhat" negative views.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/06/poll_the_sagging_popularity_of.html

:rofl:

.... trying to lay claim to all of them I guess so they "win" either way.

And yet the media kept covering them.

It makes sense that the dip is mostly from people "somewhat" negative. This likely reflects that basically moderate people who initially bought the media representation of the tea party people as like people next door are beginning to see that they are actually rather extreme.

What is interesting is the effect of the fact that so many Republicans have moved to the right because they believed that the tea party movement was really a good wave to ride. In my Congressional district, the long time incumbent, Frelinghysen, has been speaking of wanting to repeal the health care bill. He is often called a moderate and he is ok on many environmental issues. His family has had people prominent in NJ politics since the revolutionary war. This district is so Republican that he would win no matter what he campaigns on, but I wonder how many other Republican incumbents in purpler districts have positioned themselves further to the right than ever before.

It is also interesting as a sign that people are rejecting a lot of what the mass media is telling them. I really haven't seen this happen to this degree in the past.