More on the Tea Party

[Embar Angylwrath]

Seems the Tea Party is more broad based than thought.

Four in ten of Tea Party members are Democrats or Independents.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/pol ... m-or-indie

Of that ten (and yes, I know that different polls will show different things), about 10% to 12% are Democrats. (Striking the middle here)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... story.html

What does that mean by the numbers?

Lets assume the lower end of Dems as Tea Party members, so 10%. There are 72 million registered Dems, 55 million Reps and 42 million Independents. (The rest typically vote for Mickey Mouse, Ross Perot, Spock and Nader).

PBS puts the total Tea Party at 67,000.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/201 ... based.html
Probably wrong with so many Tea Party freshmen ushered in to the House in 2010.

How many registered voters align with the Tea Party? Can't say. Can't find much on that.

Note to the board: Either I didn't understand the math on one of the polls, or its wrong, or wrongly reported.

Now, comes a pair of polls, including Gallup, that paint a revealing detailed portrait of Tea Party supporters in most ways as pretty average Americans. A Sunday poll -- actually three national phone surveys of 1,000 registered voters -- found that 17% of all polled, or more than 500, called themselves "part of the Tea Party movement."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washing ... obama.html

17% of 1,000 is not "more than 500". What am I missing here?

[Lurker]

17% of 1,000 is not "more than 500". What am I missing here?

The article says that there were three surveys of 1000 which equals 3000. 17% of 3000 is 510.

Not sure what the rest of your post means. I don't know how you jump from 10% of Tea Party members are Democrats to implying that 10% of Democrats are Tea Party members. Maybe you are drunk.

[Ddrak]

So, 17% +/- 2% (poll of 3000 gives about that error) identify with the Tea Party.
160m registered voters means 27m identify with TP.
10% are Dem, so 2.7m Dems
30% are Indy, so 8.1m Indy
60% are Rep, so 16.2m Rep

That breaks down, if you allowed TP as a registered preference:

69m Dems
39m Reps
34m Indy
27m TP

Those are pretty scary numbers for the GOP, and it's why they bend over to get TP support. I wonder what percentages the OWS movement will claim from those numbers? If I had to guess, a lot of the 10% Dem would flip from TP to OWS.

Dd

[Embar Angylwrath]

17% of 1,000 is not "more than 500". What am I missing here?

The article says that there were three surveys of 1000 which equals 3000. 17% of 3000 is 510.

Not sure what the rest of your post means. I don't know how you jump from 10% of Tea Party members are Democrats to implying that 10% of Democrats are Tea Party members. Maybe you are drunk.

Actually I wasn't trying to imply that all. I was trying to figure out how many Dems (or what percentage of the national Dem base) associate themselves with the Tea Party.