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Washington DC Tea Party Exit Poll

GOP Still Has Work To Do With Tea PartiersTax Day Tea Party Protestors Split On Promotion of Family ValuesPalin and Paul: A Tale of Two Tea Parties

To this point, our understanding of the Tea Party movement has been shaped in two ways: first, bymedia coverage of the signs and speakers that appear at a Tea Party event, and second, by phonesurveys identifying those favorable towards, supportive of, or actively participating in the movement.While these methods are insightful, they are each inherently flawed. Typical media coverage focusesalmost exclusively on the most radical and sensational parts of the protest. Phone surveys do a good jobof analyzing those that support the movement, but they cannot provide true portraits of Tea Partyactivists because participation levels tend to be overstated when collected by phone.Moreover, the Tea Party movement is unique in that it is exclusively defined by its rallies. There is noofficial platform, national committee, or spokesperson. Rather, when we think about the Tea Party, wethink specifically about its rallies and protests. To truly understand the Tea Party, we need tounderstand the people that attend Tea Party events.TargetPoint Consulting and POLITICO have addressed these issues by taking a statistically valid snapshotof actual attendees at a Tea Party event through a partnership

on an “exit poll” survey of 457 people at

the Washington DC Tax Day Tea Party rally the evening of April 15, 2010 on the Washington Monumentgrounds. Our findings are detailed in this memo.

KEY FINDINGS

PARTISANSHIP

Despite a heavily Republican presidential voting record, Tea Party attendees are reluctant to embracethe GOP today. They are distinctly not Democrats, but they are also not extreme Republican partisans.

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Only 43% of attendees call themselves Republican, but their presidential voting history is solidlyRepublican: 70% voted for John McCain in 2008, and 74% voted for George W. Bush in 2004.However, this is not as strong a Republican showing as it was among Republicans themselves:consider that in 2004 95% of self-identified Republicans voted for Bush and in 2008 86% votedfor McCain.

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Despite this partisan history, they are wary of partisanship moving forward: a majority (51%) of attendees say that neither party can be trusted to fix government, 69% refused to choose eitherthe Democratic or Republican party on a generic Congressional ballot (a ballot that did include a

generic “Tea Party endorsed” candidate), and only 7% say that the Republican Party repres

ents

the views of the Tea Party movement “extremely well.” Moreover, 73% of attendees agreedthat “I want to send a message to both political parties.”

For more information on this survey, including topline and crosstabular data, please visit http://www.politico.com or http://www.targetpointconsulting.com or email infotpc@targetpointconsulting.com

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Still they have an overt dislike of Democrats and the Democratic party: only 9% identify as aDemocrat, 12% voted for Obama, 8% for Kerry, only 9% say they have the best ideas forreforming and fixing government, they garner only 6% on the generic congressional ballot, and76% say that Democratic representation of the views of the Tea Party

movement are “

not at all

well.”

•

In total there are three instances in which respondents were given an opportunity to specificallypick between the two parties or to choose no party at all: partisan identification, a genericcongressional ballot, and a query on which party had better ideas for reforming government.Only 13% of attendees are hard-core committed Republicans that picked the GOP at eachopportunity. Nearly half, 42%, were unwilling to commit themselves to the Republican Party forany of these questions. At this point, Tea Partiers remain unwilling to hitch their wagons to theGOP in 2010.IDEOLOGY

The Tea Party is, unsurprisingly, for small-government and cuts to taxes and spending; but there is aclear split when it comes to government promotion of moral values.

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Overwhelming majorities of 88% and 81% say government is trying to do too many things bestleft to individuals and businesses, and that government should cut taxes and spending,respectively. But in terms of values, Tea Party attendees are split right down the middle. A slim

majority of 51% say “Government should not promote any particular set of values”, versus 46%that say “Government should promote traditional family values in our society.”

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We can compare these to Gallup data collected in September of 2009: nationally, 57% saidgovernment was doing too much (among Republicans it was 80%), while 53% said governmentshould promote traditional values (among Republicans it was 67%). So the Tea Party is actuallymore conservative than national Republicans when it comes to the size and role of government,but less conservative than national Republicans in terms of government promotion of traditionalvalues.

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Indeed, combining the responses to some of these questions is a revealing ideological exercise:43% of attendees said government is doing too much AND that government should promotetraditional values, a distinctly conservative view; 42% said government is doing too much ANDthat government should NOT promote any particular set of values, an ideological view used bythe Cato Institute as an indicator of libertarianism (currently 23% of all Americans fit into thiscategory).

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This split between a libertarian Tea Party and a socially conservative Tea Party is reinforcedwhen we consider the combination of all three ideological questions we asked, questions on thesize and role of government, the role of traditional values, and the dynamic between taxes and

spending. If we count the number of times a respondent gave the “conservative” answer

(government should do less, it should promote traditional values, and cut taxes and spending),40% of Tea Party attendees gave the conservative answer all three times, and 42% gave theconservative answer only two times. Those that gave only two conservative responses weremost likely to defect on the role of traditional values.

For more information on this survey, including topline and crosstabular data, please visit http://www.politico.com or http://www.targetpointconsulting.com or email infotpc@targetpointconsulting.com

POLITICAL FIGURES

Sarah Palin and Ron Paul are two of the most popular politicians among the Tax Day Tea Party, but for two very different reasons.

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Overall, Palin and Paul each capture the top spots when asked what politician today bestexemplifies the goals of the Tea Party movement with 15% and 12% respectively. We see nearlythe same thing on the forced choice 2012 presidential ballot where Palin tops the list with 15%of the vote and Paul comes in second with 14%. Mitt Romney is the only other person to breakinto double digits on the presidential ballot with 13%.

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Palin, Paul and Romney were also each popular choices when respondents were asked if theywould consider supporting each

candidate in 2012, garnering Yes’s from 44%, 38% and 42% of

the crowd, respectively. Other top performers here were Gingrich, who tied Palin with 44%saying yes, they would consider supporting him; Senator Jim DeMint with 39%, Mike Huckabeewith 36% and Tim Pawlenty at 33%.

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Sarah Palin and Ron Paul represent the dueling factions of the Tea Party. Palin consistentlyperforms

better among the “traditional values” crowd

, including her first place rank on thesupport question with 52% saying Yes, I would support her. Paul, on the other hand, performsbest among those that say

“

government should not promote any particular values:

”

he ranksfirst on the support measure with 41%.

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Moreover, 48% of Palin voters attend religious services weekly versus only 25% of Paul voters;

90% of Palin voters are 4’s or 5’s in their anger over “the moral direction of the country”, versus

66% of Paul voters, and

59% of Palin voters are 4’s or 5’s in their anger over same sex marriage,

versus 34% of Paul voters.

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However, while Paul does not perform well among traditional values promoters, Palin doesperform decently among the more libertarian group, indicating some potential crossover appealbetween the two camps of the Tea Party. Beyond that, Gingrich and Romney performadequately enough in both groups that they too have potential to be a bridge between thelibertarian and socially conservative sects of the Tea Party.

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Barack Obama is only open to consideration by 11% of Tea Party attendees, but 2/3 of

respondents strongly agreed that “Barack Obama is pursuing a socialist agenda.”

ISSUES

Concern over taxes is overwhelmed by anger over healthcare reform and the growth of our debt and government; meanwhile social issues, especially gay marriage, are pushed to the bottom of the list.

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The issues that engendered the highest levels of anger echoed the signs and speakers of theevent: healthcare reform (76% extremely angry), debt (74%), government intrusion intopersonal lives (73%), the growth of government (69%), bailouts (66%), and the stimulus (64%).

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While 76% of Tea Party attendees are extremely angry about healthcare reform, just 13% say itis the issue they are

most

angry about. Instead, 27% say they are angriest about the growingnational debt. The issue that attendees were most likely to designate as the issue they were theleast angry about was same sex marriage (22%).

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Interestingly, given the fact that it was a Tax Day rally and a number of speakers and signs

equated T.E.A with “Taxed Enough Already”,

anger over

the “current levels of taxation” ranked

only 9th with 59% extremely angry.

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Tea Partiers had very low levels of anger about Obama’s handling of Afghanis

tan and Iraq (only26% extremely angry), growing competition from China (28%), and same sex marriage (33%).

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We found an interesting difference in anger levels between the two highest profile issues of social conservatives: 50% of attendees were extremely angry about the number of abortionsperformed each year, but only 33% were extremely angry about same sex marriage.