For a movement that's helped to reshape the Republican Party-and by extension, reshape American politics-we know shockingly little about the people who make up the Tea Party. While some in the GOP once hoped to co-opt the movement, it's increasingly unclear which group-the Tea Party or establishment Republicans-is running the show. Politicians have largely relied on conjecture and assumption to determine the positions and priorities of Tea Party activists.
Until now. The results of the first political science survey of Tea Party activists show that the constituency isn't going away any time soon-and Republicans hoping the activists will begin to moderate their stances should prepare for disappointment. Based out of the College of William and Mary, the report surveyed more than 11,000 members of FreedomWorks, one of the largest and most influential Tea Party groups. The political scientists also relied on a separate survey of registered voters through the YouGov firm to compare those who identified with the Tea Party movement to those Republicans who did not. (Disclosure: The political scientist leading the survey was my father, Ronald Rapoport, with whom I worked in writing this piece.)
For the first time, we can now look at what a huge sample of Tea Party activists believe, as well as examine how those who identify with the Tea Party differ from their establishment GOP counterparts. Here are the three biggest takeaways from the study:
1. Tea Party activists are not Republicans.
Republicans are now reliant on the Tea Party. While the number of Tea Party supporters has declined since 2010, they still make up around half of Republicans, according to NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys. More important, they are the most active supporters when it comes to voting in primaries, volunteering on campaigns, and participating in various other activities political parties are reliant upon. Seventy-three percent of Republicans who attended a political rally or meeting identified with the Tea Party. The activists are vehemently anti-Democratic. Among the FreedomWorks sample, only 3 percent of people voted for Obama or a Democratic House candidate in 2008, and less than 6 percent identify as either independents or Democrats.
Yet the Tea Party activists doing work for the Republicans are surprisingly negative about the party they're helping. While 70 percent of FreedomWorks activists identify as Republican, another 23 percent reject the Republican label entirely and instead, when asked which political party they identify with, choose "other." Asked if they considered themselves more Republican or more a Tea Party member, more than three-quarters chose Tea Party.
Given that so many don't identify with the GOP, it's perhaps not surprising that the activists also rate the party they vote for so poorly. Given a spectrum of seven choices from "outstanding" to "poor," only 9 percent of activists rated the Republican Party in the top two categories. Meanwhile, 17 percent put the party in the bottom two. In total, 32 percent rated the party in one of the three positive categories while a whopping 40 percent rated the party in one of the negative ones.
In other words, the activists providing a huge amount of the labor and enthusiasm for Republican candidates are, at best, lukewarm on the party they're voting for. Few are concerned about what their impact on the future of the GOP will be. Which brings us to:
2. Tea Party activists aren't nearly as concerned about winning.
Or at least they're significantly more concerned with ideological purity than with political pragmatism. The survey asked FreedomWorks activists if they agreed or disagreed with the statement, "When we feel strongly about political issues, we should not be willing to compromise with our political opponents." Altogether, more than 80 percent agreed to some extent. Thirty-two percent of respondents "agree strongly" with the statement. Meanwhile, less than 10 percent disagreed even "slightly." In another series of questions sent out to FreedomWorks activists, the survey asked whether they would prefer a candidate with whom they agree on most important issues but who polls far behind the probable Democratic nominee or a candidate with whom they agree "on some of the most important issues" but who's likely to win. More than three-fourths of respondents preferred the candidate who was more likely to lose but shared their positions.
In other words, the Tea Party cares more about what nominees believe than whether they can win-and compromising on politics means compromising on principle.
The findings help explain what's happened in so many GOP primary races. Both nationally and at the state level, moderate GOP officeholders found themselves with primary challengers. The Tea Party has helped propel several upstart candidacies, like Christine O'Donnell's infamous effort to win Delaware's Senate seat or more recently, Richard Mourdock's successful challenge to sitting Senator Dick Lugar. In both of those cases, and several others, the Tea Party candidate has proved too extreme for the general election and lost. But despite the losses, the push toward conservative purity continues. A recent New York Times story showed that even House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, seen as the leader with the most clout in the Tea Party movement, has been unable to move the faction's members in his party into more moderate terrain. In light of these survey results, that makes sense-Tea Party elected officials are simply reflecting their supporters. Meanwhile, those left in the establishment fear the party's new direction.
3. Attempts to bridge the gap between establishment Republicans and the Tea Party are doomed to fail.
There's no shortage of moves from Republicans to keep the Tea Party in the fold while shifting things more to the center. After the dismal GOP performance in the 2012 elections, establishment figures began pushing back against the Tea Party. Famous consultant Karl Rove announced a new political action committee designed to challenge extreme GOP candidates with more marketable ones. The national party even put out a report after the 2012 losses that pushed for more pragmatic candidates that could have a broader appeal. As noted, even Eric Cantor is trying.
But the gap between the two groups is huge. In the YouGov survey the study uses, more than two-thirds of Tea Partiers put themselves in the two most conservative categories on economic policy, social policy, and overall policy. Only 23 percent of non-Tea Partiers place themselves in the most conservative categories on all three issues; nearly 40 percent don't locate themselves in the most conservative categories for any of the three policy areas.
Most jarring: On some issues, like abolishing the Department of Education and environmental regulation, the establishment Republicans are actually closer to Democrats than they are to the Tea Party respondents. That's a gap too large to be overcome by a few political action committees and gestures of goodwill.
Tea Party activists dominate the Republican Party, and they're no less willing to compromise with the GOP than they are with Democrats. FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe summed it up nicely in his book title: Hostile Takeover.
Simply put, the GOP is too reliant on the Tea Party-and based on these survey results, the Tea Party doesn't care about the GOP's fate. It cares about moving the political conversation increasingly rightward.
