North Texas Tea Party Shuns Mitt

It's probably no surprise, but the North Texas Tea Party (NTTP) reports that its members don't much like the likely GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. Three candidates rank higher in Tea Party preference: Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and, um, I forget the third. Oops. Oh yeah, it's Rick Perry. 35% of those who responded to the NTTP survey prefer Rick Santorum, 27% Newt Gingrich, and 13% Rick Perry. Mitt Romney is the first choice of only 9.7%.

After the jump, my analysis.

---

First, this is not a scientific opinion poll. It's a survey of NTTP members. I'm not sure what it means to be a member of the NTTP, other than perhaps to have signed up for the NTTP mailing list at some point in the past. 144 people responded to the survey, but the NTTP doesn't say how many people received the survey and did not respond. Extrapolating these results to any population larger than just those 144 people would be unwarranted scientifically. But, still, it makes for an interesting data point.

That data point strongly suggests that at least 144 people in north Texas who self-identify as Tea Party really don't like Mitt Romney. Only 17% of NTTP had Mitt Romney as either their first or second place choice. Nobody (zero, zilch, zip, 0 out of 144) named Mitt Romney as their first choice for vice president.

So, how does the NTTP explain the fact that Mitt Romney won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, leads in polls of likely voters in the GOP primaries in South Carolina and Florida, and leads in polls of likely GOP voters nationwide? According to the NTTP, it's a conspiracy of the "elite" -- the media and the political establishment in the Northeast:

It appears that just maybe some people don't think a couple hundred thousand people in Iowa and New Hampshire should control the electoral destiny of this nation. And, while none of the candidate's [sic] are perfect, each should be looked at clear-eyed, without the blinder the media and the political establishment in the Northeast would have us wear. The presidential primary is only over if we want those two elite groups running things for us.

Source: North Texas Tea Party.

I think someone in north Texas is in a state of denial and he's wearing a tri-corner hat.