MOVEMENT-COUNTERMOVEMENT DYNAMICS AND MOBILIZING THE ELECTORATE*
Social movements draw attention to how their goals align with political candidates but also intensify tensions in local settings. These tensions can take the form of oppositional voter mobilization when the movement is perceived as a formidable threat. In this article, I argue that protest signals the potential for electoral victory, and that the mobilization of opposing voters results when countermovement organizations frame the potential for victory as threatening to voter's interests. I provide empirical support by examining Senate voting outcomes in the 2010 midterm election and show that increases in Democratic voting were most pronounced in counties with high Tea Party rally activity. In complementary analyses, I find that Independent voters are more likely to oppose the Tea Party in counties with higher rally activity, and this opposition increased their likelihood of voting for Democrats.
Contributor Notes
* Direct correspondence to: Burrel Vann Jr., Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine, 3151 Social Science Plaza A, Irvine, CA 92697. (bvann@uci.edu). This research was made possible thanks to Architects and by generous funding by the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship Program and the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine.
† I am grateful to Edwin Amenta, David Meyer, Rory McVeigh, Su Yang, Kraig Beyerlein, Bryant Crubaugh, Justin Van Ness, Melissa Warstadt, and the Social Movements/Social Justice Workshop at the University of California, Irvine for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this article and to Neal Caren and the four anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2015 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.