Who are the tea partiers? A clearer portrait from CNN

CNN has a fascinating new poll out, which you can see here as a pdf file.

The fascinating bit is that it doesn’t just try to find out what tea party activists think: it seeks to tell us who they are.

So here are some key takeaways.

Two thirds of people who identify with the tea party movement are men. 80% are white. 74% have at least some college education.

65% earn more than $50,000 a year. (A third earn more than $75,000 a year.)

Though only about 19% of Americans live in rural communities, fully half of the tea partiers are small town folks.

40% are between the ages of 30 and 49. But one interesting thing is that the movement doesn’t seem to hold up its appeal among older folks.

The movement is predominately Protestant (Catholics are less interested, according tot his survey) and appears to have almost no support among America’s other burgeoning religious groups.

Here’s another wrinkle: According to this survey, tea partyism is most popular in the Midwest and West, but not so much in the South.

(In the Northeast, it’s also underperforming.)

How popular is the movement? A third of respondents either strongly or moderately support its goals.

19% either strongly or moderately oppose the tea party’s agenda.

But the biggest plurality — nearly half — “don’t know enough to say.”

Only 7% of respondents have taken any action of any kind (even on-line) to support its efforts.

My big takeaway:

The tea party movement is still confined to a fairly narrow slice of American life, largely white Protestant male Midwestern and Western.

But the movement is succeeding hugely at translating that niche appeal into media exposure and into outsized influence over the Republican Party’s decision-making.

It’s also a big enough chunk of passionate people that they could sway GOP primaries this year.

Tags: election10