One goal of this project is to understand the roots of the Tea Party movement in both major party supporters and supporters of Ross Perot and the Reform Party.

The second goal is to understand the dynamics of the current Tea Party movement through surveys of activists and supporters.

Three separate surveys are being used to address these issues:

A survey of more than 12,000 FreedomWorks supporters carried out in December, 2011.  The first report is available (MS Word) here

A survey of a national sample of 1000 registered voters from 2010-700 had rated the Tea Party "very favorably" in 2010; and 300 others had given it lower ratings, carried out by Polimetrix/YouGov.  Together these 1000 (when properly weighted) comprise a national sample.

A paper on both the registered voter sample and the FreedomWorks sample was presented at the Midwest Political Science Convention, "Republican Factionalism and Tea Party Activiists."  Click here to download pdf verison

A panel back to 1992-1996 supporters of Ross Perot and the Reform Party, a national sample of small contributors to the Demcoratic and Prepublican in 1995, and Reform Party primary voters in 1996.