Political scientists “David Campbell”:http://politicalscience.nd.edu/faculty/faculty-list/david-campbell/ and “Robert Putnam”:http://www.gov.harvard.edu/people/faculty/robert-putnam report on what a panel survey of 3,000 Americans conducted in 2006 and 2011 has to tell us about the supporters of the Tea Party in “The NY Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html?_r=1. Among their conclusions:
The Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today.
What’s more, contrary to some accounts, the Tea Party is not a creature of the Great Recession. Many Americans have suffered in the last four years, but they are no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party….
So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.
More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.
See “here”:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html?_r=1 for the full article.