Thursday, April 15, 2010

Shocking Tea Party Demographics ... Might Be Shocking!

Laura at 11D correctly points out that it's somewhat unfair of the NYT to draw conclusions about Tea Partiers based on a comparison between Tea Partiers and the electorate as a whole. Yes, they're wealthier and better educated than the general public, but that describes high-involvement voters of any political persusasion. Much of the electorate probably doesn't even know what the Tea Party is. The an apples-to-apples comparison would look at the relationship between Tea Party demographics and all those who met a certain level of political engagement. Apparently 18% of the public identifies itself as supporting the Tea Party, which suggests that the level of engagement here is actually pretty low; perhaps it's on par with reading a single blog or listening to talk radio once a week.

(cc photo by TheBusyBrain)

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