Confusing Leaders and Followers: Did US Tea Party Movement Drive 2010 Election or Go Along for the Ride?

Lead, follow or get out of the way. The public perception is that a well-funded grass-roots political movement drove voters to the polls in the 2010 US Congressional elections and delivered a stunning victory to conservatives. However, new research suggests that the Tea Party actually piggy-backed on Republican candidates in conservative districts. In effect, getting credit for a victory in which they were more the beneficiary than the benefactor. The lesson to marketers and communicators in public or private sector positions is that doing research to understand drivers is crucial, but perhaps more importantly, perceptions matter - a lot. The Economist explains:

"The tea-party movement galvanised conservative voters and helped Republicans take the House and weaken the Democratic majority in the Senate last Fall. Right? Well, maybe not. In the latest edition of The Boston Review, a pair of Harvard political scientists, Stephen Ansolabehere and James M. Snyder, cast doubt on the conventional wisdom about the tea-party movement. Digging into the data from the 2010 mid-term elections, Messrs Ansolabahere and Snyder find that the tea-party movement largely threw its weight behind conservative candidates in conservative districts who were likely to win anyway. "The penchant for endorsing candidates in Republican-leaning areas almost completely explains the Tea Party’s success rate," they write. This applies to candidates for the House, at least. What about a tea-party bump for Senate hopefuls? Noting that the relative paucity of senatorial contests makes it hard to draw firm statistical lessons, Messrs Ansolabahere and Snyder nevertheless observe that "Tea Party endorsees ran three percentage points behind non-endorsed Republicans running in similar states."

So why did Democrats suffer a whupping in November? As someone once said, it's the economy, stupid. Again and again political scientists find that macroeconomic variables drive electoral outcomes more than any other factors. The Democrats did about as badly as we should expect the majority party to do during a brutal recession. Nevertheless, humans have story-hungry minds that see agency and intention everywhere. It rains because the gods want it to rain, and Republicans seized the House because Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers funneled a fortune into an astroturf movement that got out the conservative vote. But this is precisely the sort of story about the tea-party movement Messrs Ansolabahere and Snyder say the electoral data debunks.

This is not the picture of a political faction awash in cash funneled from wealthy individuals and corporate interests, as was commonly portrayed in media accounts. Rather, it is of a grass-roots movement faced with heavy overhead for operations at the national level and starved for cash at the local level. Nor is it the picture of an independent political movement that brought a surge in electoral support to the candidates it endorses. Rather, the Tea Party appears to have ridden the 2010 Republican wave more than created it.

Liberals got pummeled at the polls due to the recession, but fundraisers and organisers need villains, not abstractions, to rouse the troops and raise cash for the next go 'round. But none of that matters as much as the economic climate in the autumn of next year.