Policy Seekers Or Vote Maximizers? Tea Party Republicans In The U.S. House

Item

Title

Policy Seekers Or Vote Maximizers? Tea Party Republicans In The U.S. House

Description

Although scholars have focused on the legislative goals of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress, no study examines whether Tea Party members operate predominantly as policy seekers or as electorally driven vote maximizers. Therefore I ask: Did incumbent Republican legislators join the Tea Party Caucus before the 2010 elections to boost their chances of passing extremely conservative bills or to increase their reelection prospects? To answer this question, I examine the legislative records of these incumbents from 2002 to 2010 to see whether they routinely promoted a conservative strategy that conflicted with and was more extreme than the Republican platform. I also examine the level of voter support that these incumbents received before and after joining the Tea Party Caucus to see whether they enjoyed electoral gains from their new caucus membership. I find that Tea Party incumbents failed to use policy-seeking strategies and worked to maximize their electoral support.

William Bendix

Contributor

Keene State College

Creator

Andrew Markoski

Date

2015-04-11

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12088/7589

Language

en_US

Subject

Political Science

Type

Presentation

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Item sets

AEC 2015 Sciences

Site pages

Sciences