Rick Perry has the most support of any Republican presidential candidate from those who support the Tea Party, according to a new Gallup poll released today. Perry earned 35% support from Tea Party supporters, blowing away Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann, who both garnered only 14%. Ron Paul came in a distant fourth with just 12%, Cain, Gingrich, Santorum, and Huntsman all logged in with single-digit offerings.
Among those few Republicans who do not support the Tea Party, Romney came in first, with 23%, to Perry’s 20%, a statistical dead heat.
These results are based on an Aug. 17-21 Gallup poll, which showed Perry overtaking Romney as the front-runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination among all Republicans nationwide.
The poll finds that 58% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement, with 36% saying they do not consider themselves supporters. Included among the group of Tea Party supporters is a smaller group — representing 12% of Republicans — who say they are “strong” supporters of the movement. Among this smaller group, Perry’s lead is even greater, 46% to 16%, over Bachmann, with all other candidates in single digits.
In Gallup’s July measurement of Republicans’ nomination preferences, before Perry officially entered the race, Romney held a slight edge over Bachmann among Tea Party supporters, 29% to 23%. Romney led Paul by 25% to 16% among nonsupporters.
Despite the current “family values,” and “social issues” focus of all Republican presidential campaigns, Gallup also notes,
Given a choice of four sets of issues, Republicans are most likely to say business and economy (38%) and government power and spending (36%) are the most important to them. Fewer Republicans rank social issues and moral values (15%) and national security and foreign policy (9%) as their top issues.
In all likelihood, because none of the Republicans actually have valid, responsible solutions to any of those issues, so, attacking the LGBT community makes for good sound bites. Or it did in the past. With a clear majority of all Americans supporting same-sex marriage, the RNC will need to work overtime to get their anti-gay bigots to the polls. Expect more gay-bashing from the GOP in coming months.