How strong is the Tea Party?

The Telegraph has a very fascinating article regarding the Tea Party's rising clout among US voters. I'm always one to take polls with a large grain of sand but when you are putting up numbers saying that over 50 percent of likely voters are more inclined to vote for a tea party backed candidate versus just 37% saying they would vote for an Obama backed candidate, it makes you sit up and pay attention. While yes there is still a lot of time left before November the trend has been favoring republicans and the tea party for a while now. But as some of these Tea party candidates start getting negative press, such as Christine O'Donnell, it may turn off voters in differently areas. Granted the flip side to that is if tea partiers and those sympathetic to their cause start to feel that a particular candidate is being treated unfairly, their may be a bigger anti-incumbent back lash because of it.