The grassroots movement where Texas talker Sen. Ted Cruz has hung his hat has reached a near-record low of supporters, according to a Gallup poll out Thursday.
Just as the party has reached a record-level of influence and notoriety thanks to a cohort of outspoken Republican senators armed with filibusters, only 22% of Americans of voting age say they support the Tea Party—the lowest number since before the group’s coming out in the 2010 elections.
More people hate the Tea Party than support it, too. Twenty-seven percent of Americans say they oppose the party. The number of Americans who said they strongly oppose the party, 17%, also outnumbers those who said they strongly supported it, 11%.
Fully half of all Americans, however, say they don’t oppose, support, or have an opinion of the Tea Party.
Despite the last week of infighting between Tea Party and more mainstream Republican congressmen, GOP voters are increasingly ambivalent about the movement.
In 2010, after Tea Party members were successfully elected in a number of districts, 65% of Republicans said they supported the movement. Now, just 38% support the party. A full half of all Republicans responded that they were neutral or had no opinion on the movement.
The poll surveyed a random sample of 1,510 adults by telephone between Sept 5-8, 2013. It has a margin of error of +/- 3%.
Jane Timm