Carver County is Minnesota’s tea party central

PBS’ Patchwork Nation launched an interactive map on Wednesday demonstrating the geographic hot-spots of Tea Party activity. Their research methods aren’t exact: “To get an understanding of how big the loosely affiliated movement is and where it’s based, Patchwork Nation has combed through online directories to find people who have registered with tea party organizations.” In Minnesota, Carver County led the state in registered Tea Partiers.

The county had 13.68 registered Tea Partiers per 10,000 residents. Other parts of the state with a higher number of Tea Party members were the Rochester area and the counties between Bemidji and Brainerd.

Hennepin County had 0.69 per 10,000, and Ramsey County didn’t have sufficient data.

Around the country, Florida, Texas and the Mountain West had higher rates of Tea Party membership than the Midwestern states and the Northeast.