Following a democratic transition, new political identities and cleavages can emerge or those repressed under autocracy can re-emerge. In new democracies, groups that were repressed often punish political actors associated with the ancien regime. Examining the first municipal elections after the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, we find that tribal identities – marginalized under authoritarian rule – (re)emerged as a politically salient identity. Despite decades of policies designed to suppress tribes, our findings demonstrate that tribal identity influenced recent electoral politics. Based on an analysis of the complete universe of Tunisian voters and candidates, we find that lists running candidates who share a common tribal identity with the underlying local population received a greater share of the vote. Counterintuitively, the country’s main authoritarian successor party, Nidaa Tounes, disproportionately benefited from the tribal advantage. We theorize that this is the result of an informational advantage that authoritarian successor parties have over their rivals. While the main parties ran tribal candidates at roughly equal rates, Nidaa Tounes was the only party to place tribal candidates on its lists at higher rates in areas on the administrative periphery where the electoral payoff was largest.