Attitudes toward immigration become more polarized during electoral periods, study finds

LAWRENCE — Immigration remains one of society’s most polarizing issues.

A new study examines how this issue affects voters during and after an election. While the results are tied to partisan viewpoints, they are less predictable than one might think.

“A strong polarization regarding immigration occurs closer to an election. But once we move away from an election, both sides begin to converge in the middle,” said Sofia Vera, assistant professor of political science at the University of Kansas.

Her article titled “Democratic elections and anti-immigration attitudes” finds that right-wing respondents exhibit more negative attitudes toward immigrants when the election cycle is in full swing, but those negative views decrease once the election is over. The research also found that left-wing respondents express lower levels of xenophobia immediately after the election, but their immigration views become more negative as time after the election increases.

Vera's work appears in the Journal of Peace Research.

“Immigration plays such an important role in the way people decide their vote,” said Vera, who co-wrote the article with Miguel Carreras of the University of California, Riverside, and Giancarlo Visconti of the University of Maryland.

“In the U.S., Europe and Latin America, many political parties are adopting very negative stances toward immigration. They want to restrict it. People are worried immigrants are going to steal their jobs or threaten the national identity. And many far-right parties are adopting extreme views, painting immigrants as a threat and basically scapegoating immigrants for their national problems.”

Vera assumed the anti-immigration rhetoric espoused during elections might be homogeneous, with most voters becoming more xenophobic due to the disapproving rhetoric. But her study found that voters move in different directions depending on where they stand ideologically.

“Right-wing voters close to elections hold the most anti-immigrant attitudes, and as time from the election elapses, their attitudes become a bit less anti-immigrant. But we also find something we weren’t expecting: We also see a movement with left-wing voters. Closer to elections, they are adopting very strongly pro-immigration attitudes. And the more time passes after elections, their attitudes revert to what they were prior,” she said.

The immigration viewpoints of centrist voters appear unmoved by such political dynamics during elections, she said.

To gather this information, her team used data from Module 5 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), a survey conducted between 2016 and 2021 in 45 different countries. The core objective of the CSES is to measure people’s stances and preferences toward representative democracy at the time of a national election. Vera employed a two-way fixed effects regression to understand how time after an election affects anti-immigrant attitudes.

One of the byproducts of Vera’s research is discovering how genuinely effective campaign messaging is in influencing voters regarding hot-button issues.

“We show that campaign rhetoric and elite rhetoric is shaping public opinion,” she said. “This also implies anti-immigrant attitudes are malleable. They can change and shift, and they do, especially around election time when this rhetoric and discourse is much stronger and more frequent.”

A KU faculty member since 2020, Vera focuses her research on political behavior in comparative perspective, as well as partisan elections and representation. 

As an immigrant from Peru, Vera said she has not personally felt targeted by anti-immigration views. 

“That has not affected me directly, not personally,” she said. “I’ve heard many stories from immigrant friends that they have been insulted or even mistreated. It hasn’t happened to me. But that doesn’t mean I’m less worried about the topic.”

Ultimately, she said she hoped this research could highlight the role — and responsibility — that political elites play during an election cycle.

“Our findings are important because there is a lot of xenophobic violence and hate crimes against immigrants,” Vera said. “And anti-immigrant speech can be a precursor to xenophobic violence. Maybe there might be some possibilities to implement interventions to mitigate anti-immigrant sentiment during electoral periods.”