National poll numbers released today affirm what primary run-ups have been suggesting: that the Tea Party has every potential of becoming the Republicans’ savior or Ralph Nader in the upcoming elections.
Of the 1,907 registered voters surveyed by the Quinnipiac University Polling Center, 44% said they would vote Republican and 39% said they would vote Democratic in the absence of a Tea Party candidate. But throw that third-party runner in and Democrats get a solid 36% percent to the Republicans’ 25%, with 15% going to Tea Partiers.
“The Tea Party movement is both a potential boon for the Republican party in the 2010 elections or a potential albatross around their neck,” says Peter Brown, associate director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, the independent organization releasing the results. And that means Republicans have every incentive to double-up by vying for that endorsement and running on the GOP ticket at the same time, as they have been in Virginia and elsewhere.
Most other results from the poll carry similarly little shock value. Of the 13% of people who identify themselves as Tea Partiers, the majority are overwhelmingly Republican-leaning, white folks who cast ballots for McCain and Bush. They have an inordinate amount of love for Sarah Palin, with 72% giving her a favorable rating, as opposed to 33% of the public at-large, and an inordinate amount of distaste for the way things are going in America, with 92% feeling dissatisfied with today’s political clime.
There was some evidence that the new bloc party has yet to fully permeate American consciousness. Of those polled, 49% said they hadn’t heard enough –which could be to say, had heard nothing — about the Tea Party movement to say they felt favorably or unfavorably toward it. That’s more than three times the amount that felt too uninformed about the Democrats to cast judgment. But the passion of those who have aligned could give that party, known or not, serious turnout sway in November.