Tea Party Losing Support in the Polls, Americans Disillusioned With Congress
The Tea Party's influence may have been felt during the 2010 election, but four years later, just 15 percent of Americans support the conservative political movement.
This number is the lowest since CBSNews first started keeping track of the group on February 2010, according to its poll. The group had the support of about 31 percent of Americans after the midterm elections in November 2010.
The party is also losing some of its appeal with its biggest supporters: Republicans. About 32 percent of Republicans are currently supporters of the party, but that figure is down 10 points from February and down 23 points from July 2010.
There are more than five months left before midterm elections, and as CBS notes, Americans are disillusioned with politicians in Congress. In a recent poll, 45 percent of Americans agreed that "it makes no real difference which party controls Congress, things go on just as they did before."
The Tea Party is made up of a group of national and local groups that are loosely affiliated. It has grassroots elements, but it also has elite backing. Polls have shown that most who belong to the Tea Party also associate with the Republican party.
Frank Newport, Gallup editor-in-chief, has said that the Tea Party is nothing new. Instead, it is just a way to rebrand issues that are important to the Republican party.
Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Dick Armey have at one point associated with the Tea Party. Bachmann formed the Tea Party Congressional Caucus in July 2010, but two years later, it was defunct.
Also, Ron Paul is not the founder of the Tea Party, more like an "intellectual godfather," according to Joshua Green.
In 2010, Green wrote, "[Paul] has become its intellectual godfather -- and its actual father, in the case of its brightest rising star, his son Rand Paul, Kentucky's GOP Senate nominee. The Tea Party has overrun the Republican Party everywhere from Alaska to Kentucky to Maine, and a version of Paul's bill to audit the Federal Reserve just passed the Senate unanimously en route to becoming law."