Theoretical explanations for the enduring strength of Islamism rest primarily on organizational and institutional variables. Structure, discipline, reputation and the provision of services, are all regularly cited as key factors for the popularity of Islamist groups. These factors readily account for the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, which captured a near majority of the seats in Egypt’s first free and fair parliamentary elections of 2011-2012. However, the strong showing of the Islamic Bloc, a grouping of three Salafi political parties which won 25 percent of the vote, presents an intriguing research puzzle. How did the Salafis, a broad religious movement which deemphasizes the authority of the traditional schools of Sunni legal theory in favor of an individualized and strictly literalist textual interpretation of the Quran and Sunnah (sayings and deeds of the Prophet), run such an impressive campaign? Their success is especially notable given that under Mubarak most Salafis fiercely opposed democracy, relentlessly criticized the Muslim Brotherhood for participating in elections, and boasted no track record in electoral politics. These facts call into question conventional explanations for Islamist electoral success. This paper combines the qualitative works on Salafism in Egypt with survey results and new sources of online data to make the case that ideology, long neglected in the political science literature and largely discounted in most explanations for the electoral accomplishments of Islamist parties, is essential for explaining the strong showing of the Islamic Bloc in Egypt’s foundational elections of 2012.