Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence from the Tea Party Movement*

TLDR

Protests may either drive political change or simply reflect underlying shifts in policy preferences. The study examines whether the Tea Party movement’s coordinated rallies on Tax Day influenced political outcomes. Rainfall on rally days is used as an exogenous instrument to vary attendance. Better weather at the initial rally strengthened the Tea Party locally, increased public support, raised Republican votes in the 2010 midterms, prompted incumbents to vote more conservatively, and shows that protests can shape policy by altering political views rather than merely revealing existing preferences.

Abstract

Abstract Can protests cause political change, or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences? We address this question by studying the Tea Party movement in the United States, which rose to prominence through coordinated rallies across the country on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. We exploit variation in rainfall on the day of these rallies as an exogenous source of variation in attendance. We show that good weather at this initial, coordinating event had significant consequences for the subsequent local strength of the movement, increased public support for Tea Party positions, and led to more Republican votes in the 2010 midterm elections. Policy making was also affected, as incumbents responded to large protests in their district by voting more conservatively in Congress. Our estimates suggest significant multiplier effects: an additional protester increased the number of Republican votes by a factor well above 1. Together our results show that protests can build political movements that ultimately affect policy making and that they do so by influencing political views rather than solely through the revelation of existing political preferences.