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Democrats Think Tea Party's Racist; GOP, Unaffiliateds Disagree
The democrats believe adherence to the Constitution is racist?Most Democrats think members of the Tea Party movement are racist. Most Republicans and voters not affiliated with either party disagree.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that among all Likely Voters 31% believe most members of the Tea Party are racist. Nearly half (48%), however, say most Tea Party members are not racist. Another 22% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
But 56% of Democratic voters say most members of the small government, anti-tax movement are racially biased. Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans and 55% of unaffiliated voters reject that assertion and say most Tea Party members are not racist.
Only 16% of all voters think most Americans are racist. That's down six points from August 2008 just before Barack Obama's election as president. Seventy percent (70%) say the majority of their fellow citizens are not racially biased. Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure.
The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on October 4-5, 2010 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.
Perceptions about the state of black-white relations in America have fallen dramatically since the summer of 2009. But voters are still more optimistic about that relationship than they are about relations between whites and Hispanics and between blacks and Hispanics.
Thirty percent (30%) of African-Americans believe most Americans are racist, a view shared by just 14% of whites. Democrats are at least twice as likely as Republicans and unaffiliateds to think most of their fellow citizens are racially biased.
Members of the Political Class believe it even more strongly. While only 16% of Mainstream voters say most Americans are racist, 34% of the Political Class think it's true.
A plurality (46%) of the Political Class says most members of the Tea Party are racist, but 53% of Mainstream voters disagree.
Sixty-two percent (62%) of African-Americans say most of those in the Tea Party are racist, but 52% of whites don't share that opinion.
"Conservative" is still the most positive political label you can attach to a candidate. But voters now have stronger reactions--positive and negative-- to the Tea Party label than they do to the more traditional labels.
