Support for the conservative Tea Party movement has dropped to the lowest point since its inception in 2009, according to a new Gallup poll released Monday coming nearly five years after the group played a pivotal role in helping Republicans reclaim control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections.
Just 17 percent of Americans told Gallup they consider themselves to be Tea Party supporters, down from a peak of 32 percent in November 2010, just after the mid-term elections.
Another 24 percent of respondents said they are opponents of the Tea Party, compared to a high of 31 percent who said the same last year. A record 51 percent said they are neither supporters nor opponents of the group.
Support dropped most dramatically among right-leaning independents, going from 52 percent in 2010 to 23 percent in the two most recent polls from 2014 and 2015. Support among conservative Republicans dropped 21 points, from 63 percent to 42 percent.
The Tea Party rose to national prominence in 2009 as a response to President Obama's inauguration.
"As support gradually eroded over the next year, opponents of the Tea Party gained the upper hand and have led supporters in all 10 Gallup polls measuring views of the movement since the start of 2012. Since August 2012, support has failed to reach 25%, and it has fallen below 20% in each of the last two polls," Gallup said.
Part of the drop in support could be because it's difficult for grassroots groups to sustain high levels of energy for long periods of time, according to The Washington Post. The group also no longer needs to fight the Republican Party from the outside, as its supporters can now fight it from within.
In the past few months, Tea Party sympathizers in the House Freedom Caucus and Tea Party Caucus were able to pressure House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, into early retirement and deny presumed successor Kevin McCarthy his opportunity to take the position, according to Salon.
The nationwide Gallup telephone poll was conducted Oct. 7-11 among 1,015 adults in the United States and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
