Tea Party support correlates to religious affiliation, survey finds
The Tea Party hardly claims to be a religious movement - it mostly advocates for smaller government and lower taxes - but feelings about the movement correlate to affiliation with certain religious groups, according to new survey data from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants are roughly five times more likely to agree with the Tea Party movement than to disagree with it, Pew found. American Jews, meanwhile, are nearly three times as likely to disagree with the movement than agree with it.
Tea Party supporters 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 … social issues” like abortion and same-sex marriage, according to the Pew analysis.
“They draw disproportionate support from the ranks of white evangelical Protestants,” the analysis said of the Tea Party.
Tea Party supporters comprised 41% of the electorate in November, previous Pew polling found, with the overwhelming majority backing Republican candidates, contributing to the GOP’s House takeover.