Tea Party and Goldwater

Leave it to me to bash political science and then link to something written by a political scientist about polling data. Well, anyway, over at Salon, Alan Abramowitz parses some data on Tea Party self-identification and reports that the movement is essentially an intraparty movement within the GOP and not an independent force:

Eighty percent of Tea Party supporters were Republican identifiers or independents who leaned toward the Republican Party, and 54 percent were strong Republican identifiers. And 96 percent of Tea Party supporters reported voting for John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

Furthermore,

Fully 84 percent of strong Tea Party supporters described themselves as conservative and 54 percent described themselves as very conservative while only 41 percent of all members of the public described themselves as conservative and only 20 percent described themselves as very conservative.

here's some fun with maps for the sake of comparison:
1964 Election returns by county:

                                          source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1964prescountymap2.PNG

Tea Party Membership per 10,000 (June 2010)

                                          source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/patchworknation/#/archive/?category=elections&map=tea-party-membership-june-2010

Throw out the Deep South results because of lack of voting rights in 1964.