These poll numbers were released earlier today by Rasmussen Reports -- "an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information."
43% Now View 'Tea Party' Label As A Negative
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Looks like it's a little more popular to be a liberal or a progressive these days, although conservative remains the best political label you can put on a candidate for public office. Being linked to the Tea Party is the biggest negative.
Rasmussen Reports periodically asks Likely U.S. Voters to rate political labels, and the latest national telephone survey finds that 38% consider it a positive when a political candidate is described as "conservative." That's consistent with surveys for several years but down slightly from 42% in January . Twenty-seven percent (27%) see conservative as a negative political label, up six points from the prior survey. Thirty percent (30%) rate it somewhere in between. (To see survey question wording, click here .)
"Tea Party" has suffered much worse. Considered a positive political label by 29%, 43% now think Tea Party is a negative description for a candidate. That's a net rating of negative 14, making it the worst thing you can call a candidate. Twenty-three percent (23%) put it somewhere in between.
Last September , 32% viewed Tea Party as a positive label and 38% a negative one. That was the previous low point for the grassroots smaller government movement. But that negative finding fell to 32% in January.
The partisan divided on the Tea Party label is perhaps predictable: 56% of Republicans see it as a positive, while 70% of Democrats think it's a negative. Voters not affiliated with either party also now regard Tea Party as a negative label by a 42% to 25% margin.
Fifty-six percent (56%) of non-Tea party members see the label as a negative.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 25-26, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC . See methodology .
Now slightly more voters (31%) view "progressive" as a positive label, but nearly as many (26%) see it as a negative. Still, that reverses the downward trend for "progressive" over the last four years. In July 2007 , it was seen as a slightly more positive label than conservative.
The much maligned label "liberal," which prompted most liberals to begin calling themselves progressives, still struggles along in last place. Twenty-one percent (21%) think calling a candidate a liberal is positive, while 38% view it as a negative. That compares to a low of 17% and 44% respectively in January of this year. Thirty-four percent (34%) place it somewhere in between the two.
Republicans continue to strongly dislike the liberal label, while Democrats lukewarmly defend it. Unaffiliated voters view it primarily as a negative or somewhere in between a positive and a negative.
Progressive, however, is a positive term for a plurality (49%) of Democrats and a negative one for a plurality (45%) of Republicans. Unaffiliateds are closely divided.
"Moderate" continues to have the best overall net rating. Thirty-seven percent (37%) see it as a positive label, while only 13% view it negatively. Forty-five percent (45%) rate it somewhere in between.
Several prominent Democrats and their media friends charged the Tea Party with being economic terrorists during the recent congressional debate over raising the debt ceiling for their refusal to accept any tax increases. But just 29% of voters think members of the Tea Party are economic terrorists.
More voters still think the average Tea Party member has a better handle on America's problems than the average member of Congress does, but there's a sharp difference of opinion between Democrats and Republicans. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Likely GOP Primary voters believe the Tea Party will help Republicans in the 2012 presidential election .