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POLITICS

Tea Party Is Still Most Toxic Political Label

Many pundits have suggested that America is now a 50-50 nation politically, and a look at how voters react to political labels suggests that may be true. Being linked to the Tea Party is still the worst thing you can say about a candidate, but Republicans don’t agree.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that roughly the same number of Likely U.S. Voters consider it a positive description if a candidate is called a conservative (31%), a moderate (33%) or a progressive (30%).

Twenty-five percent (25%) think it’s a negative description to be called a conservative, while 39% rate it somewhere in between. Slightly more (28%) believe it’s a negative to be called a progressive, the label liberals have adopted to get out from under the “L” word, but 34% say it’s somewhere in between. As for moderate, only 15% view it as a negative description, while 48% see it as somewhere in between positive and negative. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

(Want a free daily e-mail update ? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on October 13-14, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Fieldwork for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC . See methodology.

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