[lbo-talk] Thoughts on the Tea Party

brad bauerly bbauerly at gmail.com
Tue Apr 20 14:42:39 PDT 2010


SA wrote:
>Not to beat a dead horse, but - once again - these income numbers are
basically meaningless. Not only do the TP live more in the South. Not only do they live more in rural areas. They're also *much* more likely to be retired, which on average means lower current incomes (and lower mortgage payments). The only available data that give a reliable picture of overall SES are education. And when you look at real Tea Party supporters (people who say they follow news about the TP and strongly support it), their education profile as a group mirrors that of households around the 80+ percentile. SA ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Which data says that? One poll showed that TP 'activists' were more educated than the general public (big surprise), one showed TP supporters to be less educated than the general public (higher in some college, lower in college graduate and postgraduate degrees), and one showed supporters to be more educated. Same mix of results on retirement and age: some higher and some lower. You are kind of picking and choosing which results to highlight to make your point. Even then, if we take the results that show the highest education levels we only get a 12% increase in college grad and postgrad than the rest of the respondents. How does this put the whole group in the 80+ percentile?

Brad



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