No surprise here, I guess, but interesting discussion with some tea 'baggers chiming in to comment in response to Silver's analysis:
Wednesday's
NYT/CBS poll on the 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves with the tea-party movement was myth-busting in certain ways. Tea-partiers are wealthier and more educated than most Americans, the poll found. They are largely disinterested in the existence of a third party. And they don't particularly care about social issues (three-fifths favor some form of legal recognition for same-sex couples).
Another stereotype, however, rings true: tea-partiers are disproportionately attached to, and perhaps influenced by, FOX News. And they are particularly enamored of Glenn Beck. Nationally, just 18 percent of people have a favorable opinion of Beck (the majority have no opinion whatsoever about him). But most tea-partiers do. Do the math, and you'll find that 59 percent of those who do think highly of Beck consider themselves a part of the tea-party. This is, in fact, the single biggest differentiator of any of the items that the NYT asked about: not ideology, not any particular political belief, but whom they watch on television...
~snip~
Academic studies have
found that FOX News in fact has quite a bit of ability to persuade voters and reformulate public opinion. That Beck (whose program debuted one day before Barack Obama's inauguration) has become one of its prominent voices may help to explain why the tea-parties have become so influential, and why public opinion appears to have shifted so dramatically within the past 18 months. FOX may, or may not, have a role in directly promoting the tea-parties. But its opinion programming has become the water-cooler around which the tea-partiers gather.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/tea-party-bears-becks-imprint.html