Poll: Tea Party could loom in elections

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. congressional hopefuls running as Tea Party candidates could fare better than those running as Republicans, a Rasmussen Report released Monday indicates.

In a three-way generic ballot test, results found Democrats attracting 36 percent of the vote, the Tea Party candidate garnered 23 percent and Republicans collected 18 percent, Rasmussen said in a release. Another 22 percent of respondents said they were undecided.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party movement emerged victorious, the results indicated. Thirty-three percent of people surveyed said they preferred the Tea Party candidate, 30 percent said they were undecided, 25 percent would vote for a Democrat, and 12 percent favored the GOP.

The respondents were asked to assume that the Tea Party movement organized as a new political party for purposes of the survey, Rasmussen said.

The standard generic congressional ballot indicated Republicans hold a modest lead over Democrats. It appears that the policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are currently enough to unite both those who prefer Republicans and those who prefer the Tea Party conservatives.

Forty-one percent of all voters nationwide say Republicans and Democrats were so similar that a new party was needed to represent America, results indicated.

The national telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted Friday and Saturday. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.