Tea Party Leadership Still Up for Grabs

At yesterday's D.C. Tea Party rally, we surveyed attendees to determine which public figures Tea Partiers saw as potential leaders. Our results found a movement drawn to media figures such as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, but still unable to identify with any one elected official.

At the Tax Day Tea Party rally in D.C., FrumForum surveyed attendees to ask which public figures Tea Partiers liked, and which ones they did not.

The survey reached 162 individuals at a rally of many thousands. Our answers obviously do not constitute a scientific sample: consider this result more like a focus group than an opinion poll.

Question 1: Which public figure best expresses the values of the Tea Party Movement?

The top three names were Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Michelle Bachmann, with percentage shares of 22%, 19%, and 13% respectively. These three names dominated the answer field and together make up more than 50% of all answers. 10% of individuals polled couldn’t even provide an answer, leaving the remaining 40% to be divided among smaller figures such as Ron Paul, Paul Ryan, and Newt Gingrich.

Question 2: Which elected politician could best act as a leader for the Tea Party Movement?

Bachmann had the largest share of any named person, but her share was only 17%. An inability to answer the question was the majority response, with 34% saying they couldn’t think of anyone qualified to act as a leader of the movement. Other individuals got significantly smaller slices of the pie, either 5% or less.

Question 3: Who is the #1 Republican that does not belong in the Tea Party Movment?

John McCain dominated this category, with 30% citing him. Not far behind him was Lindsey Graham (20%) and even George W. Bush (16%).

Republican candidates for 2012 can take solace in the fact that none of their names came up, including Mitt Romney’s despite the often mentioned similarities between the Romney health plan in Massachusetts and the healthcare reform signed by President Obama.

FrumForum also asked two policy questions as well.

Question 4: What are your thoughts on immigration reform/Amnesty?

On this question there was almost a unanimous sentiment against amnesty. Some have speculated that the Democrats will begin discussing immigration reform to bring an anti-immigrant sentiment out of the Tea Party woodwork and drive Hispanics to vote for Democrats in the midterms. As other surveys have suggested though, just because Tea Partiers oppose amnesty doesn’t mean that immigration is a hot button issue for them.

Question 5: Do you support the legalization of marijuana

FrumForum decided to finish off with this question to try and get a sense of how “libertarian” this crowd may be, even if only imperfectly. We found that 60% oppose marijuana legalization and 36% supported it (the rest were unsure.)

We particularly enjoyed the comment of one Tea Partier: “If it was legal, then it wouldn’t be fun anymore!”