Wednesday, October 20, 2010

A New Study on the Tea Party

A friend of mine recently got a study she did as part of her doctorate program at UCLA picked up by the Washington Post and then other news organizations. Fox News was one of them (but for you anti-Fox people it was also picked up by the NY Times).

For her study she went to a Tea Party Rally and conducted a survey by going through the group row by row and taking pictures of every sign she saw. Her results showed that an overwhelming number of signs had to do with complaints about big government and fiscal conservatism while only about 6% of the signs had to do with the president's race or religion and 1% were tied to 'birthers.'

Here is a video of when she was invited to go onto Fox and Friends and explain her study. It does have the "Fox touch" but I think it presents her findings well.


Here is also a link to the Washington Times article that first covered her findings.


All I can say is "Emily, good job." I think her findings, although just one study and one rally, show that we can often overlay our fears or prejudices over a political movement and completely misrepresent what that movement is all about. That goes for both sides of the aisle.