Tea party convergence: Big boost for Republicans in Election 2010 - Christian Science Monitor

It’s still three weeks and a couple days before the midterm election. But the likelihood of a Republican takeover in Congress just keeps growing, powered by a major boost from the tea party movement – a political phenomenon that has evolved from a scattered and sometimes flaky insurgency into a sophisticated, organized effort.

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In his latest estimate, polling expert Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog says Republicans have a 72 percent chance of taking over the House, up from 67 percent last week. Also, he writes in his latest New York Times column, the GOP has “nearly even odds of a achieving a net gain of 50 seats” – 11 more than it needs to become the majority party in the House.

No doubt that’s thanks in large measure to the higher level of preelection energy among tea-fueled Republicans.

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The latest survey conducted jointly by the Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University shows why.

“On every measure, strong supporters of the tea party movement stand above the rest of the field,” writes Dan Balz in the Post.

“For starters, take the question of whether people are very interested in these elections,” Balz writes. “Forty-three percent of Democrats said they are. Among Republicans, 57 percent said they're very interested. Among tea party supporters the figure was 74 percent, and among the strongest tea party supporters it was 83 percent.”

While the Republican Party has had its run-ins with tea partyers – most notably in GOP primaries where establishment candidates got whacked – the Washington Post-Kaiser-Harvard poll shows a large majority of tea party supporters favoring a GOP takeover of Congress.

Meanwhile, what probably should have been called the “tea parties” – over the past year there have been many disparate and sometimes contending groups – are becoming more organized and unified as the election approaches.

In Virginia, for example, groups from around the state have formed a federation called “Virginia Tea Party Patriots.” The group just held a two-day convention in Richmond.

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