Subpartisan Cues and Ideological Distinctions: The Effect of the Tea Party Label on Voter Perceptions of Congressional Candidates

Objective. We aim to fill a gap in the voter heuristic literature by estimating the impact of subparty cues—labels that connect candidates to an intraparty faction—on perceptions of candidates’ ideological positions. We argue that the Tea Party label acts as a subpartisan cue, and should affect perceptions of both Republicans and their Democratic opponents. Methods. We measure ideological perceptions using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), and measure Tea Party “saliency” based on how often candidates were linked with the Tea Party in news media. Using probit regression, we estimate the impact of Tea Party saliency on ideological perceptions of candidates. Results. We find that Republican candidates often associated with the Tea Party are more likely to be perceived as conservative or very conservative, even when we control for candidate and voter ideology, while their Democratic opponents are perceived to be more moderate. Conclusion. The results suggest that extremizing cues like the Tea Party label can have a moderating effect on opponents. These findings shed new light on the role and interaction of party-related voting cues, and have important implications for elections, campaigns, and voter opinion and behavior.