A new detail from additional information released by Gallup on Friday about their national survey on the GOP presidential field: Tex. Gov. Rick Perry, who outpaced everyone in their recent survey with 29 percent of the total, captured 35 percent of those GOP voters who consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement.
Rounding out the candidates supported by Tea Party backers were former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), both at 14 percent, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) at 12, businessman Herman Cain at 6, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 5, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (R) at 3 and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman at 1 percent.
Nearly 600 respondents in the national GOP poll were Tea Party supporters. Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney led among the 36 percent of Republicans who did not consider themselves Tea Partiers with 23 percent, but was followed closely by Perry at 20 percent. The combination of Perry’s dominance within the Tea Party sect and running closely with Romney among the those who don’t consider themselves part of that movement pushed him to a lead outside the margin of error in the overall GOP presidential poll. A pro-Perry Pac released another poll Thursday night that showed the Texas Gov. moving past Bachmann in Iowa.
The Tea Party supporter sample was 58% of the original Gallup poll, which used 1,000 live telephone interviews with Republicans and GOP-leaning voters conducted from August 17th to the 21st, which has a sampling error of four percent.
Kyle Leighton
Kyle is the Editor of TPM Media’s PollTracker. He graduated from Beloit College (WI) and began working in politics before getting an M.A. in magazine journalism from New York University, where he interned at TPM and the website of The New Yorker.
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