Research

Dr. Blum’s research focuses on party factions and their impact on contemporary US politics. Here’s a list of her recent publications and projects.

Books

How the Tea Party Captured the GOP (University of Chicago Press), 2020.
Cooperating Factions: A Network Analysis of Party Divisions in U.S. Presidential Nominations (with Hans Noel at Cambridge University Press), forthcoming.

Articles

“Cross-Platform Partisan Positioning in Congressional Speech,” at Political Research Quarterly (with Jon Green, Kelsey Shoub, and Lindsey Cormack), 2024.
“How Local Factions Pressure Parties: Activist Groups and Primary Contests in the Tea Party Era,” at the British Journal of Political Science (with Mike Cowburn), 2023.
“Conditional Congressional communication: how elite speech varies across medium,” at Political Science Research Methods (with Lindsey Cormack and Kelsey Shoub), 2023.
“Trump-ing Foreign Affairs: Status Threat and Foreign Policy Preferences on the Right”, at Perspectives on Politics (with Christopher Parker), 2019.
“Student-run exit polls 101,” at PS: Political Science and Politics (with Sarah E. Croco, Elizabeth Suhay, Lilliana Mason, Hans Noel, Jonathan Ladd, and Michael A. Bailey), 2019.

Book chapters

“Parties in Miniature: Where Factions Fit in U.S. Party Coalitions” in Placing Parties in American Political Development, eds. Adam Hilton and Jessica Hejny (forthcoming with the University of Pennsylvania Press).
“Exploring the Motivations of the MAGA Movement” (with Christopher Parker) in Connective Action and the Rise of the Far-Right: Platforms, Politics, and the Crisis of Democracy, eds. Steve Livingston and Michael Miller (forthcoming with Oxford University Press).
“A Tangled Web: Religion and the Regime in the US” (with Clyde Wilcox) in Religion and Regimes: Support, Separation, and Opposition, eds.Ted Jelen and Tehran Tamadonfar (Lexington: Lexington Books, 2013).

Under review

“Who Decides?: Media, MAGA, Money, and Mentions in the 2022 Republican Primaries” (R&R with Mike Cowburn and Seth Masket).
“Ends Versus Means: Public Support for Congressional Redistricting” (R&R with Peter McLaughlin, Nathan Barron, Bennie Ashton, Chuck Finocchiaro, and Michael Crespin).
“Presidential Endorsements as Voter Cues: Evidence from the 2022 Midterm Elections” (R&R with Nathan Barron, Peter McLaughlin, Bennie Ashton, Chuck Finocchiaro, and Michael Crespin).

In progress:

Partisanship and Inequality in COVID-19 (book project with William Bianco and Josh McCrain).
“Does the Medium Change the Message? Comparing Results Across Five Mediums of Congressional Text” (working paper with Kelsey Shoub and Jon Green).
“Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Campaign Funds for Childcare” (preparing for submission with Peter McLaughlin, Joy Rhodes, Nathan Barron, Bennie Ashton, Chuck Finocchiaro, and Michael Crespin).
“The Politics of Ableism and Support for Disability Policy” (working paper with Monica Schneider).
“Unveiling Ableism: A Conjoint Experiment on Disability and Electability” (working paper with Josh McCrain).
“Intra-Party Factions in Inter-Party Politics” (working paper with Hans Noel).

Dr. Blum’s research focuses on party factions and their impact on contemporary US politics. Along with her 2020 book, How the Tea Party Captured the GOP (University of Chicago Press), this includes a recent article in Perspectives on Politics, “Trump-ing Foreign Affairs: Status Threat and Foreign Policy Preferences on the Right” (with Christopher Parker).

Dr. Blum’s research agenda encompasses several ongoing projects. Projects near completion or under review include: The Enemy Within, a book manuscript hat explores the MAGA movement and its impact on American democracy (with Chris Parker, read more about our MAGA panel study below); Parties in Miniature: Where Factions Fit in U.S. Party Coalitions, a working draft of a chapter for an edited volume about contemporary parties; “Legislative Communication: The Media of Choice across Congress,” a comprehensive analysis of constituent-facing Congressional communication (with Kelsey Shoub and Lindsey Cormack, under review); “How Local Factions Pressure Parties: Activist Groups and Primary Contests in the Tea Party Era,” an article using a difference-in-difference research design to assess the Tea Party’s impact on contemporary parties and polarization (with Mike Cowburn, under review); “Measuring Partisanship in Congressional Speech,” which uses machine learning techniques to generate member-level ideology estimates using five corpora of public speech (with Kelsey Shoub, Jon Green, and Lindsey Cormack); “Factions in Party Nomination Networks,” a network-based analysis of presidential endorsement patterns (with Hans Noel); and “Representation, Responsiveness, and COVID-19,” a comprehensive research project examining the political roots of inequities in the U.S. domestic COVID-19 response (Russell Sage Grant Proposal with William Bianco and Josh McCrain, revise and resubmit).

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Complete CV

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Complete CV

Publications

How the Tea Party Captured the GOP: Insurgent Factions in American Politics

(University of Chicago Press, forthcoming August 2020).

The rise of the Tea Party redefined both the Republican Party and how we think about intraparty conflict. What initially appeared to be an anti-Obama protest movement of fiscal conservatives matured into a faction that sought to increase its influence in the Republican Party by any means necessary. Tea Partiers captured the party’s organizational machinery and used it to replace established politicians with Tea Party–style Republicans, eventually laying the groundwork for the nomination and election of a candidate like Donald Trump.

In How the Tea Party Captured the GOP, Rachel Marie Blum approaches the Tea Party from the angle of party politics, explaining the Tea Party’s insurgent strategies as those of a party faction. Click here for more.

Cross-Platform Partisan Positioning in Congressional Speech

Jon Green, Kelsey Shoub, Rachel M. Blum, Lindsey Cormack, “Cross-Platform Partisan Positioning in Congressional Speech,” Political Research Quarterly (published online March 2024), doi:10.1177/10659129241236685.

How Local Factions Pressure Parties: Activist Groups and Primary Contests in the Tea Party Era

Rachel M. Blum and Mike Cowburn, “How Local Factions Pressure Parties: Activist Groups and Primary Contests in the Tea Party Era,” British Journal of Political Science (published online June 2023), doi:10.1017/S0007123423000224.

Conditional Congressional Communication: How Elite Speech Varies across Medium

Blum, Rachel, Lindsey Cormack, and Kelsey Shoub. “Conditional Congressional Communication: How Elite Speech Varies across Medium.” Political Science Research and Methods 11, no. 2 (2023): 394–401. doi:10.1017/psrm.2022.28.

Trump-ing Foreign Affairs: Status Threat and Foreign Policy Preferences on the Right.

Rachel Blum and Christopher Parker. Perspectives on Politics 17, no. 3 (September 2019): 737-755. (Replication files) Click here for more.

“Student-Run Exit Polls 101.”

Croco, Sarah E., Elizabeth Suhay, Rachel Blum, Lilliana Mason, Hans Noel, Jonathan Ladd, and Michael A. Bailey. PS: Political Science & Politics 52, no. 2 (2019): 361–66. doi:10.1017/S1049096518002330. Click here for more.

A Tangled Web: Religion and the Regime in the US

Rachel M. Blum and Clyde Wilcox, “A Tangled Web: Religion and the Regime in the

US,” in Religion and Regimes: Support, Separation, and Opposition, eds.Ted Jelen and

Tehran Tamadonfar (Lexington: Lexington Books, 2013).

Click here for more.

The Long Shadow Of the Tea Party and the Republican Party's Shift To the Right

Rachel Blum and Mike Cowburn, “The Long Shadow of the Tea Party and the Republican Party’s Shift to the Right,” at the London School of Economics and Political Science Blog, June 28, 2023.

Why the GOP Can't Quit Trump

Christopher Sebastian Parker and Rachel Blum, “Why the GOP Can’t Quit Trump” at the Monkey Cage (Washington Post), March 2021.

What Donald Trump's Rhetoric Borrows From the Tea Party

“What Donald Trump’s Rhetoric Borrows From the Tea Party,” Mischiefs of Faction, February 9, 2017.

Partisan Conflict and Congressional Outreach

Solomon Messing, Patrick Van Kessel, Adam Hughes, Nick Judd, and Rachel M.Blum,

“Partisan Conflict and Congressional Outreach,” a Pew Research Center Report

(February 2017). Click here for more.

Is there such a thing as a Conservative Foreign Policy?

Rachel M. Blum and Christopher S. Parker, “Is there such a thing as a Conservative

Foreign Policy?” in the Brookings Governance Series (October 2014).

Click here for more.

Publications

How the Tea Party Captured the GOP: Insurgent Factions in American Politics

(University of Chicago Press, forthcoming August 2020).

Trump-ing Foreign Affairs: Status Threat and Foreign Policy Preferences on the Right.

Rachel Blum and Christopher Parker. Perspectives on Politics 17, no. 3 (September 2019): 737-755. (Replication files) Click here for more.

“Student-Run Exit Polls 101.”

Partisan Conflict and Congressional Outreach

Solomon Messing, Patrick Van Kessel, Adam Hughes, Nick Judd, and Rachel M.Blum,

“Partisan Conflict and Congressional Outreach,” a Pew Research Center Report

(February 2017). Click here for more.

Is there such a thing as a Conservative Foreign Policy?

Rachel M. Blum and Christopher S. Parker, “Is there such a thing as a Conservative

Foreign Policy?” in the Brookings Governance Series (October 2014).

Click here for more.

A Tangled Web: Religion and the Regime in the US

Rachel M. Blum and Clyde Wilcox, “A Tangled Web: Religion and the Regime in the

US,” in Religion and Regimes: Support, Separation, and Opposition, eds.Ted Jelen and

Tehran Tamadonfar (Lexington: Lexington Books, 2013).

Click here for more.

Panel Study Of The MAGA Movement

The Panel Study of the MAGA Movement (PSMM) is a survey designed to assess the attitudes and behavior of the people who consider themselves part of the “Make America Great Again” movement, popularized by the Trump campaign in 2016.