What percentage of Romney voters were self-reported "Tea Party" supporters?

[YoungDemCA]

Now, I know this is impossible to measure precisely, because public support for the "Tea Party movement" varies somewhat in terms of total numbers. Furthermore, some of us would be tempted to say, "100 percent of Romney voters were Tea Party supporters"...with a great degree of truth there.

But let's consider that Romney got just over 60 million votes. I remember reading that between 15 and 20 percent of the adult population in the United States consider themselves Tea Party supporters. If there are 250 million adults in the US, that means that roughly 40-50 million of them support the Tea Party, by that measure.

Of course, not all of those people voted, and not all of them voted for Romney (some voted for third-parties or perhaps wrote in a candidate). Still, I would venture to guess that they voted at a higher rate than the general public, and that most of them voted for Romney. Right-wing hard-liners are now somewhat notorious for their high voter turnout (especially in midterm elections). Therefore, I think that as many as 30-35 million admitted Tea Party supporters were Romney voters.

If you notice, that's at least half of Romney's total, perhaps more. And this isn't even getting into the insidious and anti-democratic effects of gerrymandering...

No wonder the Republican Party is so crazy. At the very least, half (probably considerably more than half) of their presidential candidates' voters are hard-line, far-right voters. In terms of midterm elections, it's safe to assume (considering that less committed and partisan voters don't vote nearly as much in the midterms) that an even greater majority of Republican voters are Tea Party fanatics.

This is what we're up against.

[nyquil_man]

1. I did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation

based on the exit polls.

21% responded that they supported the Tea Party. That's about 27 million voters. Of those, 87%, or about 23.6 million, voted for Romney.

If you look at conservatives, there were about 45 million of them. 37 million of them went for Romney. So you're not that far off the mark.

[Blue_Tires]

2. Who really knows

Since the Tea Party doesn't really officially *stand* for anything other than showing everyone how loud, mad and ignorant they are; and since they aren't a "real" party, politicians/voters/activist/pundits have been juggling the "republican/tea party/libertarian/independent" labels and switching up whenever it is advantageous for them....

[1StrongBlackMan]

3. And, besides ...

with the (un)popularity of teapartiers these days ... one would be hard pressed to find someone (not making, or hoping to make, a buck off it) willing to admit being a teapartier.

[YoungDemCA]

4. Good points

I agree, it's an amorphous label.