TRACKING THE PULSE of the Tea Party movement.

The 2012 election season is heating up. There are many potential Presidential candidates, and we will make the bold prediction that every single Republican will attempt to gain the support of the tea party movement. But which candidates do this powerful grassroots movement really support?

This poll gauges such support using a unique “run-off” matchup model. It is designed to elicit deeper preferences from voters and make it much more difficult for well-organized campaigns to “game” the system. The results reflects the percentage of times a candidate was preferred in a head-to-head “run-off” against other potential candidates. We also suspect they more accurately reflect the true pulse of the tea party movement than those cited by the mainstream media.

Take the straw poll.