Political Advertising and Public Opinion on Immigration

• In Event: The Politics of Migrant Visibility and Invisibility

Abstract

An immense number of public opinion studies examine the effects of economic, ethnoracial, and values-linked cues on how the public thinks and feels about immigrants and immigration. Some of these have explored the role of demographic “context”; others have varied information with the context of survey experiments; still others have explored localized treatment effects via natural experiments. What is missing is close attention to how the real-world “information environment” shapes peoples’ outlooks. In this study, we assess the relationship between one particular aspect of this environment – campaign advertising – and political attitudes about immigration. Using a new dataset that tracks the location, frequency, and content of immigration messaging at all levels of U.S. politics, and a compendium of public opinion surveys fielded over the past decade, we ask what the messaging environment looks like, how it has evolved geographically and over time, and whether it appears to move public opinion.

Authors

• Matthew Wright, University of British Columbia

• Morris E. Levy, University of Southern California