Tea Party Losing Support in Illinois?

-By Warner Todd Huston

There is a new poll out of Illinois citizens that seems to show that the Tea Party has lost support in the and of Lincoln.

The Paul Simon Institute is the group that conducted the poll and with that I should note that this think tank is a left-wing group. One is tempted to imagine that these lefties started with the hope that the Tea Party was losing support in Illinois and found “proof” to shore up their ideological druthers.

In any case, the Simon Institute says the survey, “conducted October 11 through October 15, 2011, of 1000 registered voters shows that 25.5 percent either strongly agreed or agreed with the Tea Party movement. In last October’s Simon Poll, 37.9 percent fit in that category.”

This year, 42.2 percent either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the Tea Party, compared with last year’s 35.3 percent.

Also, a Tea Party affiliation only helps a candidate with about a third of the electorate, but hurts with about 60 percent of the voters, according to the survey.

The poll also found that those in the group “less likely” to vote for a Tea Party candidate grew even more anti-Tea Party, moving from 46% opposed now to 59.9% opposed to Tea Partiers.

“Overall from 40 to 60 percent of the Illinois voters expressed negative evaluations of the Tea Party and its candidates, with 26 percent to 31 percent who supported the Tea Party,” said John S. Jackson, one of the co-directors of the poll. “While this demonstrates the polarized climate of
opinion regarding the Tea Party, significantly more Illinois voters opposed than supported the Tea Party, and the opposition has increased markedly over the past year.”

The poll found a lot of things. Mostly, though, it affirmed (if you believe this left-wing think tank in the first place) that Illinois is a deep blue, left-wing state and that “compromise” is the word most Illinois voters invoke when discussing what they want to see in a politician.

Unfortunately, with that last point it also shows that voters are uninformed about the issues. There has never been starker differences between the philosophies of the two parties. We are at a point where compromise is not as desirable as it once was. One party — the Democrats — has drifted so far away from being a party based on American principles that compromising with it is dealing a deathblow to this country.

Compromise simply for the sake of compromise is destroying this country. too many voters are uninformed about this simple reality.

Anyway, below is the left-wing think tank’s press release. You look it over, go to their site and download the polling data, and decide what you think.