by Scott Clement, Survey Research Analyst, and John C. Green, Senior Research Adviser, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
A new analysis by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that Tea Party supporters tend to have conservative opinions not just about economic matters, but also about social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In addition, they are much more likely than registered voters as a whole to say that their religion is the most important factor in determining their opinions on these social issues.2 And they draw disproportionate support from the ranks of white evangelical Protestants.
The analysis shows that most people who agree with the religious right also support the Tea Party. But support for the Tea Party is not synonymous with support for the religious right. An August 2010 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that nearly half of Tea Party supporters (46%) had not heard of or did not have an opinion about "the conservative Christian movement sometimes known as the religious right"; 42% said they agree with the conservative Christian movement and roughly one-in-ten (11%) said they disagree.3 More generally, the August poll found greater familiarity with and support for the Tea Party movement (86% of registered voters had heard at least a little about it at the time and 27% expressed agreement with it) than for the conservative Christian movement (64% had heard of it and 16% expressed support for it).
In addition to the August poll, this analysis draws on other Pew Research Center polling from September 2010 through February 2011. The polls included a variety of questions about the Tea Party, social and economic issues, and the role of religion in forming people's opinions on these issues. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has additional resources on the Tea Party. See, for example, the analyses from February 2011 and April 2010.
Conservative and Critical of Government
As previously reported by the Pew Research Center, the Tea Party is much more Republican and conservative than the public as a whole. Indeed, Tea Party supporters are more conservative on economic issues and the size of government than either Republicans in general or all registered voters.4 According to a September 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center, almost nine-in-ten registered voters who agree with the Tea Party (88%) prefer a smaller government with fewer services, compared with 80% of all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and 56% of all registered voters.
In the same survey, fully 87% of Tea Party supporters said government is almost always wasteful, eight points more than Republicans overall (79%) and 26 points more than all registered voters (61%). And while more than half of registered voters (54%) said that corporations make too much money, Tea Party supporters were inclined to see corporations as making a fair and reasonable amount of profit. Indeed, Tea Party supporters took this position by a two-to-one margin (62% fair profit vs. 30% too much profit). A somewhat smaller percentage of all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (55%) said corporations make a fair and reasonable profit.
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