How Local Factions Pressure Parties: Activist Groups and Primary Contests in the Tea Party Era

• In Event: Party Activists and Factions

Brief Overview

Using a difference-in-difference design we show that districts featuring Tea Party activist groups and affiliated candidates in primaries moved rightward between 2008 and 2016, as measured via presidential voting behavior and representative position.

Authors

• Rachel M Blum, University of Oklahoma

• Mike Cowburn, Freie Universität Berlin Graduate School for North American Studies