Washington DC Tea Party Exit Poll

GOP Still Has Work To Do With Tea Partiers

Tax Day Tea Party Protestors Split On Promotion of Family Values
Palin 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, by
media coverage of the signs and speakers that appear at a Tea Party event, and second, by phone
surveys 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 focuses
almost exclusively on the most radical and sensational parts of the protest. Phone surveys do a good job
of analyzing those that support the movement, but they cannot provide true portraits of Tea Party
activists 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 no
official platform, national committee, or spokesperson. Rather, when we think about the Tea Party, we
think specifically about its rallies and protests. To truly understand the Tea Party, we need to
understand the people that attend Tea Party events.

TargetPoint Consulting and POLITICO have addressed these issues by taking a statistically valid snapshot
of 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 Monument
grounds. Our findings are detailed in this memo.

KEY FINDINGS
PARTISANSHIP
Despite a heavily Republican presidential voting record, Tea Party attendees are reluctant to embrace
the GOP today. They are distinctly not Democrats, but they are also not extreme Republican partisans.
• Only 43% of attendees call themselves Republican, but their presidential voting history is solidly
Republican: 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% voted
for McCain.
• 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 either
the 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 represents
the views of the Tea Party movement “extremely well.” Moreover, 73% of attendees agreed
that “I want to send a message to both political parties.”

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 • Still they have an overt dislike of Democrats and the Democratic party: only 9% identify as a
Democrat, 12% voted for Obama, 8% for Kerry, only 9% say they have the best ideas for
reforming and fixing government, they garner only 6% on the generic congressional ballot, and
76% 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 specifically
pick between the two parties or to choose no party at all: partisan identification, a generic
congressional 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 each
opportunity. Nearly half, 42%, were unwilling to commit themselves to the Republican Party for
any of these questions. At this point, Tea Partiers remain unwilling to hitch their wagons to the
GOP in 2010.

IDEOLOGY
The Tea Party is, unsurprisingly, for small-government and cuts to taxes and spending; but there is a
clear split when it comes to government promotion of moral values.
• Overwhelming majorities of 88% and 81% say government is trying to do too many things best
left 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.”
• We can compare these to Gallup data collected in September of 2009: nationally, 57% said
government was doing too much (among Republicans it was 80%), while 53% said government
should promote traditional values (among Republicans it was 67%). So the Tea Party is actually
more 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 traditional
values.
• 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 promote
traditional values, a distinctly conservative view; 42% said government is doing too much AND
that government should NOT promote any particular set of values, an ideological view used by
the Cato Institute as an indicator of libertarianism (currently 23% of all Americans fit into this
category).
• This split between a libertarian Tea Party and a socially conservative Tea Party is reinforced
when we consider the combination of all three ideological questions we asked, questions on the
size 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 the
conservative answer only two times. Those that gave only two conservative responses were
most likely to defect on the role of traditional values.

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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.
• Overall, Palin and Paul each capture the top spots when asked what politician today best
exemplifies the goals of the Tea Party movement with 15% and 12% respectively. We see nearly
the 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 break
into double digits on the presidential ballot with 13%.
• Palin, Paul and Romney were also each popular choices when respondents were asked if they
would 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 Huckabee
with 36% and Tim Pawlenty at 33%.
• Sarah Palin and Ron Paul represent the dueling factions of the Tea Party. Palin consistently
performs better among the “traditional values” crowd, including her first place rank on the
support question with 52% saying Yes, I would support her. Paul, on the other hand, performs
best among those that say “government should not promote any particular values:” he ranks
first on the support measure with 41%.
• 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.
• However, while Paul does not perform well among traditional values promoters, Palin does
perform decently among the more libertarian group, indicating some potential crossover appeal
between the two camps of the Tea Party. Beyond that, Gingrich and Romney perform
adequately enough in both groups that they too have potential to be a bridge between the
libertarian and socially conservative sects of the Tea Party.
• 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.
• The issues that engendered the highest levels of anger echoed the signs and speakers of the
event: healthcare reform (76% extremely angry), debt (74%), government intrusion into
personal lives (73%), the growth of government (69%), bailouts (66%), and the stimulus (64%).
• While 76% of Tea Party attendees are extremely angry about healthcare reform, just 13% say it
is the issue they are most angry about. Instead, 27% say they are angriest about the growing
national debt. The issue that attendees were most likely to designate as the issue they were the
least angry about was same sex marriage (22%).
• 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.
• Tea Partiers had very low levels of anger about Obama’s handling of Afghanistan and Iraq (only
26% extremely angry), growing competition from China (28%), and same sex marriage (33%).
• 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 abortions
performed each year, but only 33% were extremely angry about same sex marriage.

For more information on this survey, including topline and crosstabular data, please visit http://www.politico.com or 3
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 • There is a noteworthy tolerance here for outsourcing (only 39% extremely angry) and
competition from China (28%) despite some media portrayals of Tea Party participants as
protectionists.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
A visceral emotional response to the nation’s political direction and their own personal circumstances are
unifying characteristics of Tea Party participants.
• 3 out 4 attendees (75%) say they are “scared about the direction our country is going in”, 72%
are “worried that the next generation’s standard of living will be lower than (their own),” and
63% said they were simply “angry at Washington.”
• This group is largely untouched by the housing crisis, as only 15% say it has caused them severe
distress, but 51% of attendees say they have a close friend or family member who is
unemployed, indicating they are sharing in the pains of the recession with other Americans.
• An incredibly high 29% of Tea Party attendees are small business owners; compare that to a
2006 Pew study that found 13% of all Americans were small business owners, and a 2004 Pew
study that found 19% of Republicans were small business owners.

DEMOGRAPHICS
Attendees of the National Tea Party skew male, middle-age, white, high income and well educated; there
are no discernible differences in religiosity. They were even wealthier and better educated than previous
studies of Tea Party supporters.
• 64% of attendees were male and 36% were female, roughly comparable to the gender
breakdown of Tea Party supporters in the recent CBS/NY Times poll (59/41), and markedly
different from the national gender split of 49% male, 51% female.
• Nearly half (49%) of attendees were between the ages of 45 and 64, whereas nationwide the
middle-aged account for only 26% of our population. Interestingly, the Tea Party crowd was not
nearly as gray as Tea Party supporters were in the NY Times/CBS survey; there 29% of Tea Party
supporters were 65 or older, versus only 10% of tax day tea partiers.
• 84% of tea party participants were White, compared to 75% of the overall population.
• Roughly 1 out of every 3 people in attendance (34%) have a total household income of $100,000
or more. This is a notable deviation from the NY Times/CBS survey in which only 20% of Tea
Party supporters reported that level of income, a number already ahead of national household
income patterns.
• Tea Party attendees were exceptionally well educated: 59% had at least a college degree and
about 1 out of every 4 people there had at least some postgraduate study, well above national
educational levels (33% at least a college degree, and 16% postgrad) and beyond even previous
measures among Tea Party supporters that mimicked the national numbers.
• There are no noticeable differences in the religiosity of Tea Party participants: 39% attend
religious services weekly, exactly the same as the 2008 electorate.
• While we might attribute these higher numbers for income and education to the geographic
bias of the study, it’s worth noting that only 1 out of every 3 attendees was from the
Washington DC metropolitan area. Of course, those from outside the metro area likely had the
means to travel to a rally in the middle of the work week.

For more information on this survey, including topline and crosstabular data, please visit http://www.politico.com or 4
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LIMITATIONS
Of course, the critical limitation of this study is that it is a snapshot of only one Tea Party event, on a
specific day at a specific location. Indeed, there were hundreds of Tea Party events held this year on Tax
Day all over the country. Undoubtedly, the demographics, political behavior, vote history, and issue
attitudes varied across each of these rallies. Our study’s statistical validity extends only to the attendees
of the 2010 Tax Day Tea Party at the Washington Monument. We have taken a representative snapshot
of the approximately 25,000 people in attendance, but we cannot reliably interpret these numbers as
being representative of ALL Tea Partiers. Nonetheless, it is a reasonable proposition that these results
can be used as a rough guide – like the ill-formed but vaguely accurate maps of old – to Tea Party
attendees nationwide.

METHODOLOGY
TargetPoint Consulting and POLITICO partnered on an “exit poll” survey of attendees at the Washington
DC Tax Day Tea Party rally the evening of April 15, 2010 on the Washington Monument grounds. The
survey was conducted by Edison Research on behalf of POLITICO and TargetPoint, and POLITICO and
TargetPoint were responsible for the content of the questionnaire.

A random sample of attendees were approached during the event and asked to complete the self-
administered questionnaire. The response rate was 58%. A total of 457 attendees age 18 and older
completed the survey.

All samples are approximations. A measure of the approximation is called the sampling error. For this
survey the sampling error was +/- 5% for a 95% confidence interval. Nine-five percent of the intervals
created this way will contain the value that would be obtained if all of the attendees of the event were
interviewed using the same procedures. Other non-sampling factors, including non-response, are likely
to increase the total error.

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For more information on this survey, including topline and crosstabular data, please visit http://www.politico.com or 5
http://www.targetpointconsulting.com or email infotpc@targetpointconsulting.com