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.
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