The Tea Party Movement and the Geography of Collective Action

We examine the geography of the Tea Party movement by drawing upon a unique data source that harvested thousands of events from the Meetup.org and Tea Party Patriots websites during the latter half of 2010. The spatial distribution of events strongly suggests that Tea Party activism was borne out of economic grievance, as it corresponds quite closely to the incidence of home foreclosures. The findings more generally reinforce the impression that Tea Party activists varied in the extent of their broader political vision and strategic acumen. On the one hand, many gathered together to express dissent and make their opposition identity known wherever they happened to live. But some did unite with like-minded groups to direct their activity toward defeating incumbents, capturing open seats, and electing their own candidates, possibly altering the outcome in a number of elections, primary and general. A geographic perspective on movement activism reveals that while not remarkably strategic with respect to the 2010 elections, Tea Party protest was not purely expressive either.

[1]  Geoffrey Brennan,et al.  Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference , 1997 .

[2]  S. Verba,et al.  Injury to Insult: Unemployment, Class and Political Response , 1982 .

[3]  W. Crotty.  The Race to 270: The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004 (review) , 2009 .

[4]  Zachary Courser.  The Tea Party at the Election , 2011 .

[5]  Debra C. Minkoff.  Producing Social Capital , 1997 .

[6]  K. Zernike.  Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America , 2010 .

[7]  John Coggin,et al.  The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism , 2011, Perspectives on Politics.

[8]  J. LeSage.  Introduction to spatial econometrics , 2009 .

[9]  S. Openshaw.  A million or so correlation coefficients : three experiments on the modifiable areal unit problem , 1979 .

[10]  Luc Anselin,et al.  Spatial Dependence in Linear Regression Models with an Introduction to Spatial Econometrics , 1995 .

[11]  S. McClurg,et al.  The Mobilization of Core Supporters: Campaigns, Turnout, and Electoral Composition in United States Presidential Elections , 2005 .

[12]  K. Opp.  Soft Incentives and Collective Action: Participation in the Anti-Nuclear Movement , 1986, British Journal of Political Science.

[13]  Anil K. Bera,et al.  Simple diagnostic tests for spatial dependence , 1996 .

[14]  D. Shaw.  The Race to 270: The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004 , 2006 .

[15]  G. Brennan,et al.  Expressive voting and electoral equilibrium , 1998 .

[16]  Steven E. Finkel,et al.  Personal Influence, Collective Rationality, and Mass Political Action , 1989, American Political Science Review.

[17]  Alexander A. Schuessler.  EXPRESSIVE VOTING , 2000 .

[18]  Andrew Reeves,et al.  Turning Out the Base or Appealing to the Periphery? An Analysis of County-Level Candidate Appearances in the 2008 Presidential Campaign , 2011 .

[19]  Luc Anselin,et al.  Do spatial effects really matter in regression analysis , 2005 .

[20]  D. Shaw.  The Effect of TV Ads and Candidate Appearances on Statewide Presidential Votes, 1988–96 , 1999, American Political Science Review.

[21]  J. Baron.  Confusion of Group-Interest and Self-Interest in Parochial Cooperation on Behalf of a Group , 2000 .

[22]  L. Anselin.  Spatial Econometrics: Methods and Models , 1988 .

[23]  G. Brennan,et al.  The Impartial Spectator Goes to Washington: Toward a Smithian Theory of Electoral Behavior , 1985, Economics and Philosophy.

[24]  A. Getis.  The Analysis of Spatial Association by Use of Distance Statistics , 2010 .

[25]  Andreas P. Kyriacou.  Rational Irrationality and Group Size: The Effect of Biased Beliefs on Individual Contributions Towards Collective Goods , 2011 .

[26]  Wendy K. Tam Cho,et al.  Environmental Determinants of Racial Attitudes Redux: The Critical Decisions Related to Operationalizing Context , 2011 .

[27]  C. Lo,et al.  Countermovements and Conservative Movements in the Contemporary U.S. , 1982 .

[28]  Christopher F. Karpowitz,et al.  Tea Time in America? The Impact of the Tea Party Movement on the 2010 Midterm Elections , 2011, PS: Political Science & Politics.

[29]  J. Buchanan,et al.  Voter Choice , 1984 .

[30]  Jonathan Rodden,et al.  Economic Geography and Economic Voting: Evidence from the US States , 2006 .