In April 2010 the New York Times conducted a poll of Tea Party supporters and compared their answers to those of a random sampling of all Americans. The results are fascinating...but two things stood out to me then (and now). #tab=0">https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/14/us/politics/20100414-tea-party-poll-graphic.html #tab=0">https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytim...

84% of Tea Party supporters thought their views reflected the opinions of their fellow Americans. Only 25% of actual Americans thought that was the case. IOW, Tea Partiers were *delusional.* They thought they spoke for "the American people" as a whole. They did no such thing.

Another key takeaway is that Tea Party supporters were wealthier, more educated, and more economically secure than Americans as a whole. This was not about economic anxiety.

Tea party supporters also significantly skewed male, white, and older.

Opinions about Glenn Beck were a very significant point of difference between Tea Party supporters and the general population.

Here& #39;s a thread on a great piece historian Sean Wilentz wrote about Glenn Beck& #39;s bizarro political philosophy that informed much of the activism around the Tea Party. It& #39;s so far right, that one of its articulators was an actual neo-Nazi. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1182306094984523776?s=20">https://twitter.com/SethCotla...

Beck& #39;s outsized influence (and his obsession with Obama& #39;s supposed socialism) perhaps explains how widely Tea Party supporters diverged from their fellow Americans on the question of socialism.