Poll: Tea party, religion overlap

[Elmore Furth]

Looks like one of the legs of the three-legged stool Ronald Reagan assembled in making the coalition that became the modern Republican Party has become a large part of the Tea Party and underpin their evangelical social agenda.

By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 5, 2010; 10:11 AM

A new poll shows that half of those who consider themselves part of the tea party movement also identify as part of the religious right, reflecting the complex - and sometimes contradictory - blend of bedfellows in the American conservative movement.

The poll released Tuesday, by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute, comes as the tea party's composition and potential impact is still under hot debate. Experts disagreed about what the poll meant, with some saying it reveals serious fissures between social and fiscal conservatives and others saying the two movements can find common ground on subjects such as limiting public funding for abortion.

A Washington Post poll published Tuesday found more than half of all white evangelicals "support or lean toward supporting the tea party."

The new poll, however, showed large swaths of the tea party looking for a strong government role in hot-button social issues. Nearly two-thirds say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and 45 percent said there should be no legal recognition for same-sex couples.

Poll: Tea party, religion overlap

[AlinPA]

1. They are mostly all republicans so that's no surprise that they are white

evangelicals and fundamentalists.

[applegrove]

2. The teabaggers escaped from the religious right. So half of them still

consider themselves religious. Sure. But they no longer take their GOP marching orders from the religious right.