When did you decide to become politically active?

I had the pleasure a couple of weeks ago of meeting with Anne Sarock and Yvonne Ralsky, co-founders of The Fontier Lab.

The Frontier Lab, among other things, utilizes “deep values research” common in consumer products marketing analysis (Anne is a Cornell Business School graduate who concentrated in the field) and applies those principles to politics. Unlike typical polling, which asks random people to answer a series of questions, they conduct in depth interviews much like a food company would with consumers before marketing a product.

Much of their work has been devoted to the Tea Party movement, and they have produced studies for the Sam Adams Alliance as to what motivates Tea Party members. In their first study of the Tea Party movment, The Early Adopters, they found, among other things, that a near majority of Tea Party supporters had little or no prior political involvement, and perhaps out of political naïvité, had very high hopes of making a positive impact:

The people involved with these movements are not political junkies or crusty right–wing extremists; 46.9% were uninvolved or rarely involved with politics prior to 2009….

70.3% are hopeful that they are having a positive impact on their country.

This pie chart illustrates how few Tea Party supporters were active prior to 2009:

MORE@LegalInsurrection