> http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/search/label/tea%20parties
>
> specifically, they reported more details about Parker's poll:
>
> "More specifically, for tea party supporters, those abnormal views in
> every case but one or maybe two reflect higher expressed levels of
> racism, xenophobia, and homophobia. Some commenters wondered if TP
> approval is merely a proxy term for "white conservatives," and vice
> versa for disapprovers/"white liberals." However, in detailed
> multivariate results that control for ideology which Dr. Parker
> assured me by email he will soon publish in detail on the WISER
> website, tea party approval or disapproval is not simply a proxy for
> these labels, and does in fact have independent explanatory power of
> the level of intolerance expressed by whites. In any case, the idea
> that the recent Gallup demographic study "proves" that the views of
> tea partier supporters are "mainstream" is, it's fair to say, a fiction."
> http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/you-asked-for-it-you-got-it.html
Those numbers are overwhelmingly underwhelming. On the three key questions gauging attitudes toward blacks the Tea Partiers differed from all whites by only around 10 percentage points. By contrast, when the questions are about Social Security and Medicare (from the NYT poll), the difference is more like 40 percentage points. (Not strictly comparable since the first compares TP with whites, the second with all respondents; but the difference would still be there.)
This strikes me as a classic example of liberals, incapable of formulating strong arguments against the Right's view of capitalism - which is by far the central part of TP ideology - instead focusing on the TP's much less central racism, which is convenient because it requires no refutation.
SA