TY - JOUR
T1 - Growing Tea With Subnational Roots
T2 - Tea Party Affiliation, Factionalism, and GOP Politics in State Legislatures
AU - Rouse, Stella M.
AU - Hunt, Charles
AU - Essel, Kristen
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2022/3
Y1 - 2022/3
N2 - Most research has examined the influence of the Tea Party as a social movement or loose organization, but less is known about its influence within legislative party politics, especially at the state level. In this paper, we argue that in this context the Tea Party is primarily an intraparty faction that has caused significant divisions inside the Republican Party. Using an original dataset of legislators across 13 states for the years 2010 to 2013, we examine legislator and district-level characteristics that predict state legislators’ affiliation with the Tea Party. Our results reveal that in some respects legislators affiliated with the Tea Party are a far-right wing of the Republican Party. However, by other measures that capture anti-establishment political sentiment, Tea Party affiliated legislators comprise a factional group attempting to transform the Party in ways that go beyond ideology. These findings have important implications for the future prospects of the GOP.
AB - Most research has examined the influence of the Tea Party as a social movement or loose organization, but less is known about its influence within legislative party politics, especially at the state level. In this paper, we argue that in this context the Tea Party is primarily an intraparty faction that has caused significant divisions inside the Republican Party. Using an original dataset of legislators across 13 states for the years 2010 to 2013, we examine legislator and district-level characteristics that predict state legislators’ affiliation with the Tea Party. Our results reveal that in some respects legislators affiliated with the Tea Party are a far-right wing of the Republican Party. However, by other measures that capture anti-establishment political sentiment, Tea Party affiliated legislators comprise a factional group attempting to transform the Party in ways that go beyond ideology. These findings have important implications for the future prospects of the GOP.
KW - Republican Party
KW - Tea Party
KW - factions
KW - parties
KW - state legislatures
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114851149&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/polsci_facpubs/213
U2 - 10.1177/1532673X211041150
DO - 10.1177/1532673X211041150
M3 - Article
SN - 1532-673X
VL - 50
SP - 242
EP - 254
JO - American Politics Research
JF - American Politics Research
IS - 2
ER -