{"id":1626,"date":"2010-02-18T08:25:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T12:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/02\/18\/who-are-the-tea-partiers-a-clearer-portrait-from-cnn\/"},"modified":"2010-02-18T08:25:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T12:25:00","slug":"who-are-the-tea-partiers-a-clearer-portrait-from-cnn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/02\/18\/who-are-the-tea-partiers-a-clearer-portrait-from-cnn\/","title":{"rendered":"Who are the tea partiers? A clearer portrait from CNN"},"content":{"rendered":"

CNN has a fascinating new poll out, which you can see here<\/a> as a pdf file.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

So here are some key takeaways. <\/p>\n

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

65% earn more than $50,000 a year. (A third earn more than $75,000 a year.)<\/p>\n

Though only about 19% of Americans live in rural communities, fully half of the tea partiers are small town folks. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

(In the Northeast, it’s also underperforming.)<\/p>\n

How popular is the movement? A third of respondents either strongly or moderately support its goals.<\/p>\n

19% either strongly or moderately oppose the tea party’s agenda.<\/p>\n

But the biggest plurality — nearly half — “don’t know enough to say.”<\/p>\n

Only 7% of respondents have taken any action of any kind (even on-line) to support its efforts.<\/p>\n

My big takeaway: <\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

It’s also a big enough chunk of passionate people that they could sway GOP primaries this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN has a fascinating new poll out, which you can see here as a pdf […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[886],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}