You may not be aware that the University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, as of this writing, has been measuring Tea Party identification since 2010, which means that we have collected (an astonishing, if I do say so myself) 24 surveys of registered voters in Texas that can examine Tea Party attitudes alone, in comparison to Republicans as a whole, non-Tea Party Republicans, Democrats, and, of course, the entire electorate.

Recognizing this fact, my colleague Jim Henson and I have begun a book length project to examine the impact of the Tea Party on the coalitional politics of the Republican Party in Texas, and on Texas politics more broadly (to the extent, and in instances in which, they are not the same). As a first step in this effort, Jim Henson and I recently delivered a paper at the 2018 Southern Political Science Association conference in New Orleans, LA.

We consider this paper to be Phase I of the project, in which we simply measure and report Tea Party identification over time while examining the demographics of the Tea Party as a whole compared to the Texas electorate, but in particular, in comparison Texas Republicans as a whole.

The paper can be accessed here, and all of the graphics contained therein can be accessed here. Stay tuned for further updates.