More Polling (Yes, Hrs. Late, But In The Interest Of Full Coverage ...)

Another Tea Partier poll, from Gallup, has 28% of "adults" identifying as 'Baggers (many more than the self-proclaimed 17% in the Winston Group undertaking).

Gallup's new survey of the Tea Party movement is instructive for what it didn't find: the movement does not encompass Democrats, including independent-leaning Democrats, or more than half of true Independents. In other words, the 28% or so of adults who say they're Tea Partiers are very much likely to vote Republican when the chips are down.

Yet only eight percent of those Gallup polled claim to be "Democratic," while the Winston Group claimed 13%.

Pay attention to terminology: it's true that just half of those Tea Partiers surveyed called themselves Republicans. Yes, the lion's share of the other half say they're independent. But they're not: they're Republican-oriented conservative voters who are dismayed by the direction of the GOP and who don't want to identify with the party's brand. That's not surprising, given how tarnished that brand is. Only 8% identify as Democratic; 7% identify as liberal; 70% percent identify as conservative; two-thirds are pro-life; nearly 90% were opposed to the health care bill.

Just saw memeorandum, which has several column inches devoted to this (Actual analysis.) so, having highlighted the obvious, we are gone, except to note that Ambinder has the solution to the entire polling, damned lies & statistics problem: Go deep.

Next time, I'd love for Gallup, or any other pollster, really, to ask self-identified Tea Partiers for their vote histories, for their views on immigration and race, for their views on questions about Obama attributes (is he a socialist?), for their specific views on policy matters (do they support a "fair tax?").

Couldn't be tossed around for political advantage or dismissed in 30 seconds of headline reading if they did that though.