Where’s the Tea Party? An Examination of the Tea Party’s Voting Behavior in the House of Representatives

Abstract

Does the Tea Party affect how lawmakers vote? Given the possible spurious effect of a representative’s ideology, we leverage natural variation in the Tea Party’s existence and examine this question through the lens of party switching. Like when lawmakers change parties, representatives who (1) joined Tea Party Caucus and (2) had a large volume of Tea Party activists in their district underwent a significant shift to the right in the 112th Congress. We believe these findings support both legislative-centered and extended network theorists. An additional analysis reveals that, unlike Democrats and non-Tea Party aligned Republicans who also shifted to the extremes in the 112th Congress, Tea Party Republicans did not “bounce back” in the 113th Congress. Lastly, we find no equivalent rightward shift in comparable conservative caucuses or among Republicans with similar ideologies and districts. In the end, although the Tea Party is not a “party” in the classic sense of the word, we claim that it is having “party like” effects in Congress. In the conclusion section, we discuss the implications of these results for the stability of the current two-party system. Given our findings, a major realignment or split within the Republican Party would not be surprising.

#NeverTrump: Why Republican members of Congress refused to support their party’s nominee in the 2016 presidential election

“…Second, this result reveals that that there is a viable anti-establishment wing of the Republican Party. Such a finding is consistent with Ragusa and Gaspar's (2016) conclusion that the anti-establishment faction of the GOP behaves like a third party. On that point, it is notable that conservative activists (such as George Will and Bill Kristol) led the fight to recruit a conservative alternative to Trump, while conservative lawmakers were more likely to back their nominee.…”

“…We believe a natural extension of this logic is that, because establishment lawmakers have the most at stake in terms of the success (or failure) of their party's nominee, it would be surprising if the establishment defected en masse. A third reason why it would be odd for the establishment to oppose their own nominee is evidence of an antiestablishment wing of the GOP that behaves like a third party (Ragusa and Gaspar, 2016). Simply put, the mere existence an anti-establishment wing in the GOP leads us to expect this group of lawmakers-not the establishment bloc-to oppose the Republican nominee as they have on a range of the party's legislative priorities.…”

Party Sub‐Brands and American Party Factions

“…For example, Feulner (1983) provides an exhaustive, qualitative account of the origins of the Republican Study Committee; Medvic (2007) explores the ideological composition of the New Democrat Coalition in the 106th Congress; and (Lucas and Deutchman 2007, 4) argue that the Republican Main Street Partnership “developed as a mechanism for articulating a centrist message,” using interest group and party unity scores. Among these factions, the Tea Party has received the most scholarly attention to date, both as a movement (Skocpol and Williamson 2012) and a formal congressional membership organization (Bailey, Mummolo and Noel 2012; Gervais and Morris 2012; Hendry and Sin 2014; Ragusa and Gaspar 2016), whereas other groups (i.e., the modern Populist Caucus, the House Liberty Caucus, and the House Freedom Caucus) remain unstudied by political scientists.…”

Adversaries or Allies? Donald Trump’s Republican Support in Congress

“…Although the term “the establishment” only gained traction recently, and has therefore been subject to less empirical testing, recent evidence does indicate that an establishment/anti-establishment rift exists in the GOP (Ragusa and Gaspar 2016). One might expect establishment Republicans to oppose an “unorthodox” president like Trump.…”

“…16For data on the Tea Party Caucus, see Ragusa and Gapsar 2016. Freedom Caucus membership data was provided by Connor Phillips and David Rohde through personal communication.…”