Tea Partiers Get Their News From Fox And Are More Likely To Justify Violence Against The Government

By Matt Corley Last night, the New York Times and CBS News released a poll finding that the “18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.” The poll, which “oversampled” Tea Party supporters “for the purpose of analysis” and “then weighted” them “to their proper proportion in the poll,” found that Tea Partiers are more likely than the general public to think President Obama “favors blacks over whites“:

The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11 percent of the general public.

They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.

According to the poll, Tea Partiers are also more likely to believe that President Obama was born in another country, with 30 percent believing that compared to 20 percent of the general public. Supporters of the Tea Party are also more likely to believe that violence against the government is sometimes justified:

In terms of where the Tea Party turns for news, the poll found that 63 percent watch Fox News “most for information about politics and current events.” Additionally, 53 percent of Tea Partiers consider “shows hosted by people like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity” to be news rather than entertainment:

The Tea Partiers, who view Sarah Palin very favorably but aren’t sure she is ready to be president, have a distorted image of whether or not their views reflect America. According to the poll, 84 percent of Tea Partiers believe that “the views of the people involved in the Tea Party movement generally reflect the views of most Americans.” Only 25 percent of the general public, however, believe that the Tea Party reflects their views.

Update EnviroKnow points out that the poll also shows that Tea Partiers "are far less informed about climate change than the general public."