ABSTRACT
Donald Trump’s focus on nationalism and a revanchist cultural identity provided a basis for tea party and other conservatives’ eventual embrace of Trump as the Republican Party’s figurehead in the 2016 election in the United States. This essay provides evidence for the claim that the faction of the electorate that identified and identifies with the tea party label threw their support to Donald Trump as part of their abandonment of tea party conservatives’ earlier focus on fiscal issues. The data offered here reveal that those who identify with the tea party label embraced Trump once he received the Republican presidential nomination. The disjuncture in the views of Trump among a critical faction of mobilized GOP voters in a key state, on the one hand and party elites, on the other hand, illustrates how elites failed to recognize the potency of a political appeal that was all too familiar and welcome to voters.
