Public Attitudes Toward Immigration: Was There a Trump Effect?

Abstract

This paper examines public opinion about immigration policy in 2012 and 2016, seeking to understand whether there are meaningful differences in public opinion across these elections, whether the predictors of opinion changed, and whether the issue’s salience grew. One prominent candidate for explaining differences in opinion about immigration in 2016 is the rhetoric of Donald J. Trump, whose presidential candidacy was launched with an attack on immigration from Mexico. We analyze content from Trump’s campaign speeches and from Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign speeches to compare the emphasis on immigration themes, finding that Trump talked far more about immigration than Romney did. We also examine media coverage and find a marked increase in mentions of the immigration issue, which should, in theory, lead to more people seeing immigration as an important problem. We analyze “most important problem” questions from American National Election Studies surveys and find that mentions of immigration increased from less than one percent in 2012 to about five percent in 2016. However, we find that the overall distribution of public opinion about immigration changed very little from 2012 to 2016. Multivariate models show that the predictors of opinion about immigration policies were primarily the same in 2016 as in 2012: a combination of perceived economic threat, perceived cultural threat, and ethnic prejudice. In addition, models of presidential vote choice find that immigration issues were statistically significant predictors in 2016 but not in 2012. All of this suggests that Trump’s 2016 candidacy did not persuade so much as it activated. Trump’s rhetoric did not significantly alter American public opinion on immigration. Still, his emphasis on the immigration issue did garner increased media coverage and was attractive to many Republican and conservative voters who already held anti-immigration views.

Keywords

immigration public opinion presidential elections

Donald J. Trump declared his candidacy for the presidency of the United States on June 16, 2015, in New York City, NY. In his oft-cited speech, he said: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” (Burns, 2015).¹ This set the tone for his 2016 presidential campaign, during which Trump clearly emphasized several anti-immigration themes such as reinforcing border security, reducing immigration levels, and building a wall along the US-Mexican border. How did candidate Trump’s anti-immigration discourse during the campaign influence media coverage of immigration issues and, in turn, the perceived importance of immigration as a significant problem facing the nation? Did public attitudes toward immigration policy shift due to Trump’s emphasis on immigration, particularly among Republicans? Or did Trump simply hit upon a message that already had resonance with the Republican electorate, perhaps making immigration more salient to potential voters but not altering policy positions? This paper addresses these questions while also testing competing explanations for immigration attitudes drawn from previous research.

Various studies have explored the agenda-setting function of the media and whether the increased elite discourse on immigration and greater media coverage of the issue affect public perception of the most important problem that the nation faces. In addition, previous studies on attitudes toward immigration have examined several perspectives, including economic insecurity, cultural threat, and ethnocentrism, but often these are treated separately rather than in comprehensive models. Moreover, previous studies often fail to distinguish legal from unauthorized immigrants in their analyses. Furthermore, there is a lack of research comparing public opinion toward illegal immigrants in back-to-back elections and exploring the impact of increased elite discourse and media coverage about immigration. The current study will contribute to the growing body of work on attitudes toward immigration by filling these gaps.

We begin by reviewing previous research, and then we develop a series of hypotheses about the effects of Trump’s emphasis on immigration. To test our hypotheses, we draw upon a range of data sources, including the American Presidency Project documents, which are hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara; the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2012 and 2016 surveys; New York Times (NYT) 2006–2018 archives; Gallup monthly surveys on the most important question (MIP) that the nation faces; and data from The American Panel Study (TAPS) 2012 and 2016 surveys. We find that despite a slight increase in the salience of the immigration issue, the distribution of public opinion changed very little from 2012 to 2016, as did the predictors of opinion. The results suggest that Trump’s campaign did not persuade voters about immigration so much as it energized voters who already held anti-immigration views.

Theoretical Background and Literature

The current study explores the effect of Donald Trump’s negative rhetoric about immigration during his 2016 presidential campaign on three areas. First, we examine media coverage and the public perception of the most important problem that the nation faces. Second, we analyze public attitudes toward unauthorized immigrants and related policies. Third, we assess whether the influence exerted by opinion about immigration on vote choice changed from 2012 to 2016. Thus, in the literature review below, we first examine the agenda-setting perspective, then discuss theories about public attitudes toward immigration. After briefly reviewing the relevant literature, we develop a series of hypotheses.

Agenda-Setting Function of News Media

One of the significant outcomes of media exposure is the ability of the media to set the agenda for political debate. This ability to affect the salience of issues on the public agenda and make them the focus of public attention is called the media’s agenda-setting role. Although initially proposed by Lippmann (1922–1991), McCombs and Shaw (1972) were the first scholars to empirically tested the theory. They found a strong correlation between the number of television and newspaper stories' appearance and the frequency of those issues being mentioned as the critical issues of the day in the 1968 presidential campaign in their seminal study in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. They argue that media is successful in telling people “what to think about” if not “what to think” (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). With the agenda-setting function of the media, the perceived national importance of an issue increases in parallel with more media coverage on that issue. Numerous studies tested the agenda-setting function of the news media in different settings, issue areas, periods, and places worldwide. For instance, McCombs and Reynolds (2009) claim that they know of 425 empirical studies of the agenda-setting function of media since the Chapel Hill study. Several studies also explored whether the increased elite discourse on immigration and greater media coverage influence public opinion on the most important problem that the nation faced (Dunaway et al., 2010; Dunaway et al., 2011). These studies show evidence to support the news media’s agenda-setting function on immigration. Therefore, the expectation is that an increase in the coverage of immigration in news media makes people more likely to mention immigration as the most important problem that the nation faces. In addition to testing for an agenda-setting effect, we also want to investigate whether there are meaningful differences in the positions held by the public on immigration policies across these two elections and whether the predictors of opinion changed from 2012 to 2016. We next review previous work on public opinion about immigrants and immigration to form expectations about this.

Public Attitudes Toward Immigration and Immigrants

There has been a growing body of literature on attitudes toward immigration in the US and especially in the economically developed world, which has seen immigration waves in recent decades.² Scholars have tested several theories on public opinion about immigrants and immigration-related issues with observational data and in different experimental and quasi-experimental settings. These studies can be broadly categorized into three sub-categories.

The first group of studies focused on the economic impacts of immigration and whether the economic insecurity triggered by immigrants impacts public opinion. In the literature on public opinion towards immigration, scholars frequently explored variables such as people’s perceptions of the national economy, their personal financial situation, the skill level of immigrants, and feeling that one is in an economically vulnerable group that immigration may influence negatively. However, there are conflicting findings in the previous studies that examined the economic threat perspective. For example, some studies found that low-skilled natives or those who feel economically threatened by the immigrants have more negative attitudes (Scheve & Slaughter, 2001) while other studies found little support for the Labor Market Competition hypothesis (Valentino et al., 2019). In the countries where the natives are more skilled, people have more positive attitudes (Mayda, 2006). However, other studies found evidence that while people’s perception of their financial situation has mostly neutral effects, their impression of the national economic outlook has a positive association with their attitudes toward immigration (Burns & Gimpel, 2000; Citrin et al., 1997; Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2007; Wilkes et al., 2008). Some studies also found that the opposition to low-skilled immigrants is higher than that toward high-skilled and more educated immigrants (Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2010; Valentino et al., 2019).

The second broad group of studies concentrates on socio-cultural aspects, such as perceived adverse effects of immigrants on the host country’s culture, perceived lack of assimilation, and ethnocentrism and ethnic stereotyping directed at immigrants. For instance, several studies demonstrated that perceptions of immigrants’ assimilation to mainstream American cultural norms could significantly affect attitudes toward immigration (Branton et al., 2011; Schildkraut, 2005). Moreover, Citrin et al. (1990) suggest that an individual’s conception of “What it means to be an American” impacts their attitudes toward cultural minorities. Pérez (2010) and Valentino et al. (2013) found that some symbolic attitudes such as dislike of a specific group or general ethnocentrism drive negative attitudes towards immigrants in the United States. Brader et al. (2008) explored whether some immigrants create anxiety among the white, native-born population, and they found that Latino immigrants generate more anxiety in white Americans. Some studies also found that racial animosity drives negative sentiment towards new immigrants (Kinder & Kam, 2009; Valentino et al., 2013). Gadarian and Albertson (2014) found that people who feel anxious about the negative effects of immigration pay closer attention to the threatening information about immigrants and immigration in the news and they are more likely to be convinced by that information. Examining the support for Trump’s most punitive immigration policies during his presidency, Wallace and Zepeda-Millán (2020) found that those who feel culturally threatened by Latinos and who are racially resentful are more likely to support the Trump’s border wall, family separation, and child caging policies.

Studies focusing on the effects of perception of national identity and assimilation/integration of immigrants found that those who have a more restrictive definition of national identity based on ethnocultural views are more likely to have negative attitudes toward immigration-related policy issues (Ramakrishnan & Wong, 2010; Wright, 2012). Moreover, language and the perception of threats to language is another predictor of negative sentiment. For example, Newman et al. (2012, 2013) found that exposure to Spanish increases the perception of cultural threats and influences the attitudes toward immigration. Also, several studies explored the impact of contact with immigrants and found conflicting results. For instance, Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) and Oliver and Wong (2003) argue that contact promotes understanding and empathy, while and Reny and Newman (2018) claim that contact with immigrants can increase the negative sentiment. Some studies tested both perspectives. For example, Hager and Veit (2019) found evidence for both economic and cultural threat perspectives.

The third group of studies explored the effects of demographic variables, income levels, political dispositions, and places. For instance, several studies found that education is positively associated with favorable attitudes toward immigrants and immigration-related policies (Federico, 2004; Glaser, 2001; Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2010). Income level is another variable tested in previous studies. For example, Hanson et al. (2006) and Facchini and Mayda (2009) found evidence that high-income natives are less likely to support low-skilled immigrants due to their prospective burden on their taxes. Some studies also found that the perception of the number of immigrants coming to their countries negatively influences attitudes toward immigration (Blinder, 2013; Citrin & Sides, 2008). The studies exploring the impact of political dispositions found evidence for the role of conservatism in influencing attitudes toward illegal immigrants (Chandler & Tsai, 2001; Espenshade & Hempstead, 1996; Fennelly & Federico, 2008). Several other studies investigated the role of demographic variables in determining public attitudes toward immigration, such as age (Espenshade & Calhoun, 1993), gender (Amuedo-Dorantes and Puttitanun, 2011), and religion (Knoll, 2009; Margolis, 2018). Finally, several studies have examined the influence of geographic variables such as spatial proximity to the border (Branton and Dunaway, 2009), individuals’ local context (Ha, 2010; Hopkins, 2010), and geographical identity (Frasure-Yokley & Wilcox-Archuleta, 2019). In the analyses below, we seek to test the influence of variables drawn from each of these three broad categories.

The Current Study

The primary aim of the current study is to examine public opinion about unauthorized immigrants and policies related to them in 2012 and 2016 elections. In particular, this study seeks to understand whether there are meaningful differences across these elections, whether the predictors of opinion changed, and whether the salience of the issue grew.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

We address three sets of research questions. First, we ask whether Donald Trump’s wide use of immigration related topics in his campaign speeches resulted in an increase in the news coverage related to immigration and whether people’s perception of immigration as the most important problem that the US faces also increased. Second, we examine whether Donald Trump’s negative discourse on immigration affected public attitudes toward immigration. For this question, we compare 2012 and 2016 ANES surveys and test alternative theories about what factors influence opinion about immigration. Third, we examine the extent to which immigration attitudes influenced the vote decision in 2016 versus 2012.

We generated several hypotheses based on the aforementioned theoretical perspectives and previous empirical findings. In our first hypothesis, we investigate the impact of the agenda-setting function of the media on individuals’ views on the MIP that the nation faces. With the agenda-setting function of the media, the perceived national importance of an issue increases as media coverage of that issue increases. During the 2016 Presidential Election campaign, Donald Trump framed immigration and immigrants negatively in his campaign speeches, and the national media coverage of the issue increased. Considering these, our first hypothesis is:

H₁:

As the elite discourse on immigration increases, the media coverage will also increase, and when asked about the most important problem facing the nation, the public will be more likely to rank immigration as the MIP.

Our second set of hypotheses examines the economic threat arguments on public attitudes toward unauthorized immigrants as outlined in the theoretical background section. Here, we include three variables: perception of how the national economy is going, assessment of their financial situation, and individuals who may feel economically vulnerable due to immigration’s alleged negative effect. Therefore, our related hypotheses are:

H_2A:

Individuals who think the national economy is worsening are more likely to support stricter policies on unauthorized immigrants and immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

H_2B:

Those who think their personal financial situation is getting worse are more likely to support stricter policies on unauthorized immigrants and immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

H_2C:

Individuals who may feel economically vulnerable (unemployed, low-income, worry about their financial situation) because of low-skilled immigrants are more likely to support stricter policies on unauthorized immigrants and immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Third, we investigate the cultural threat perspectives. Hence, our third set of hypotheses is as follows:

H₃:

Those who think immigrants pose a threat to American culture are more likely to support stricter policies on unauthorized immigrants and immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

H_3A:

Individuals who think that being an American is an integral part of their identity are more likely to support stricter policies on unauthorized immigrants and immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

H_3B:

Those who think that speaking English is an essential part of American identity are more likely to support stricter policies on unauthorized immigrants and immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

H_3C:

Those who feel better when they see the American flag are more likely to support stricter policies on unauthorized immigrants and immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Fourth, we examine the ethnocentrism perspective, and our related hypothesis is:

H₄:

Those with high ethnocentrism scores are more likely to support stricter policies on unauthorized immigrants and immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Lastly, we examine whether immigration policy variables predict a vote for Romney or Trump. Considering Donald Trump, unlike Mitt Romney, made immigration one of his central campaign themes, our fifth hypothesis is:

H₅:

Those who hold negative attitudes toward immigration are more likely to vote for Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election, all else equal. We expect immigration attitudes to have a weaker influence on vote choice in 2012 than in 2016.

Data

We draw on several sources of data in this study. The primary source is the ANES 2012 and 2016 surveys, which provide several questions tapping public opinion about immigrants and immigration policy. For testing the agenda-setting hypotheses, we use NYT archives for the years 2006–2016 to find the prevalence of words related to immigration. In addition, we draw upon The American Presidency Project archives to analyze whether there was a change in Republican Presidential Nominees’ discourse on immigration in their presidential campaign speeches in 2012 and 2016. We also use Gallup monthly surveys and ANES questions to assess the public’s views of the most important problem that the nation faces. Lastly, to confirm the findings from these cross-sectional data sources, we use panel data from TAPS conducted by the Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis. This allows us to assess individual-level opinion change, something we cannot do with cross-sectional data.

Dependent Variables

We draw upon ANES surveys to examine public opinion on unauthorized immigrants and immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Both in 2012 and 2016, ANES asked three questions about unauthorized immigrants and related policies.³ Thus, we have three dependent variables for both 2012 and 2016. These are: First, “What government policy should be implemented toward unauthorized immigrants now living in the United States?”; second, “What should happen to immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and have lived here for at least ten years and graduated high school here?”⁴ Third, “How would you rate illegal immigrants?” on a feeling thermometer ranging from 0 to 100 degrees.

These three ANES questions do not appear in the TAPS surveys. We have a single, dichotomous dependent variable when analyzing TAPS data: “On the whole, do you think immigration is a good thing or a bad thing for this country today?”

Independent and Control Variables

We have five different groups of independent variables. To test economic insecurity perspectives, we included questions about people’s perceptions of the national economic outlook and views about their financial situation. Also, for the economically vulnerable group, we created dummy variables for unemployed people, those who are concerned about their financial situation, and people with a yearly income of less than $30,000.

To test the cultural threat perspective, we used three questions from the 2016 ANES post-election survey. These are: “How do you feel to see the American flag?”; “How important do you think ‘to be able to speak English’ is for being truly American?” and “How important do you think ‘to follow America’s customs and traditions is for being truly American?” The same questions were not asked in 2012. To have similar measures to test cultural threat perspectives, we included the same flag question and added two other questions: “How do you feel about this country?” and “How important is being American to your identity?”

For ethnocentrism perspectives, we employ a similar approach to measure ethnocentrism as previous scholars did. For instance, Kam & Kinder (2012) use two questions in ANES 2008 to measure ethnocentrism: Whether members of a designated group are mostly hard-working or lazy or somewhere in between, and mostly intelligent or unintelligent or somewhere in between. Respondents are randomly asked about Whites, Blacks, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans. Based on answers to these questions, the authors create an ethnocentrism scale, which is measured as: Trait in-group score – Trait average out-group score. Likewise, drawing on Kinder and Kam (2009, 2012), Valentino et al. (2013) similarly create a general ethnocentrism scale. However, they measure ethnocentrism by subtracting the average of the three out-group feeling thermometers (Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics) from the in-group thermometer (Whites). We adopt their approach and create an ethnocentrism score using the same feeling thermometer questions.

For interest in politics, attention to political campaigns, and following news on media, we use related questions in ANES pre-and post-election surveys. (Please see Supplemental Appendix for question wording).

In addition to the independent variables mentioned above, demographics such as age, gender, race, place of growing up (South), and ethnicity (Hispanic and White-non-Hispanic) are used as control variables. Moreover, dummy variables for conservatives, Republicans, college-educated people, and people whose parents were born outside of the U.S. are created.

The question on U.S. government policy toward unauthorized immigrants and children brought to the U.S. illegally are multiple-choice questions yielding ordinal data; thus, we employed ordered logistic regression for analysis in Stata. The feeling thermometer question on illegal immigrants is treated as an interval-level variable and is analyzed by OLS regression. For all the variables, missing and ‘don’t know/refused’ responses were excluded from the data analysis. As advised in the ANES documentation, survey weights, strata, and clusters were applied, and Taylor Series standard errors were used in the analysis.

Findings

Campaign Speech Content Analysis and Media’s Agenda-Setting Function

First, we conducted a content analysis of the campaign speeches of the Republican presidential nominees in 2012 and 2016 after they had declared their candidacy. Drawing upon the American Presidency Project archives, we examined each campaign speech of the two candidates, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump. We conducted the analysis using NVivo, and we compared the hierarchy of the words used by each candidate. We specifically investigated four words related to immigration: Immigrants/immigration, wall, Mexico, and border. Then we counted the number of these words in each candidate’s campaign speeches and also created hierarchy charts using NVivo. The American Presidency Project archives record 58 campaign speeches of Mitt Romney and 75 campaign speeches of Donald Trump. Figure 1 displays the comparison of hierarchy charts, and Figure 2 shows how often Romney and Trump used these words in their campaign rallies. As seen in Figure 1, whereas candidate Romney did not use any immigration-related topics in his campaign speeches (Romney, 2011), immigration was one of the top issues that candidate Trump talked about (Trump, 2015). Moreover, the examination of the four specific immigration-related words in Figure 2 shows that, in total, Donald Trump used these immigration-related words 43 times more than Mitt Romney had done. This figure clearly illustrates how these two candidates pursued two different campaigns concerning immigration.

Next, we investigated how immigration-related news appeared in the media. We conducted a content analysis of the NYT news stories related to immigration. We looked for two terms – “immigration” and “border wall” - in the news stories that appeared in NYT for an 11-year period starting from 2006 to 2016. Figure 3 shows a count of the NYT coverage from 2006 to 2016. As seen in the figure, immigration and border wall related news had continued to rise with a sharp increase in 2015 and 2016, which coincides with Donald Trump’s campaign period. The rising trend continued in 2017 and 2018, with controversies on immigration in the first years of the Trump Presidency.

Next, we moved to the most important problem facing the nation question. American national election studies asks open-ended questions for the MIP. First, it asks about the most important problem facing the nation, then for a second issue, and then a third. Lastly, it asks, “Of these problems that you just mentioned, what is the most important problem facing the nation?” Thus, the last question provides the best opportunity for comparison because it asks respondents to identify the single most important problem. As the figure clearly shows, even though there were fewer respondents (4879 respondents in 2012 vs. 3300 in 2016), individuals who mentioned immigration as the MIP of the nation significantly increased in 2016.⁵ Overall, of the respondents who answered this question, the percentage of people who mentioned immigration as the most important problem in 2012 was just 0.79%, but it was more than five times higher in 2016 (4.24%).⁶ Thus, the results show some evidence of the media’s agenda-setting function. These results are consistent with the findings of other studies which argue that increased elite discourse and media coverage impact the ascendance of immigration as the MIP (Dunaway et al., 2010; Dunaway et al., 2011), although it should be noted that in 2016 it is still a small portion of the public (less than 5%) naming the immigration issue as the most important.

We also examined Gallup’s monthly question on MIP as a robustness check. As seen in Figure 4, the proportion of individuals who mentioned immigration as the MIP during Romney’s candidacy period was on average 2.9% and never exceeded 4%. In contrast, this percentage is as high as 12% and averages 7.8% during Trump’s candidacy. Although the magnitude of the increase is not quite as prominent in the Gallup data as in the ANES data, we still find a pattern consistent with the agenda-setting effect.⁷ In summary, there appears to be a slight but discernable increase from 2012 to 2016 in the salience of immigration as an important problem facing the nation. Did Trump’s rhetoric also lead to shifts in positions on immigration issues? We turn to that question next.

Public Attitudes Toward Immigration

Descriptive Findings

Supplemental Appendix 1 shows the descriptive statistics for the questions used as dependent and independent variables. Overall, for the questions used as dependent variables, according to the unweighted frequencies, there are not many differences between 2012 and 2016. For example, for the question “What should U.S. government policy toward illegal immigrants be?” in 2012, 17% said, “Make them felons and send them to their home country,” 17% voted for “Have a guest worker program for a limited amount of time,” 58% said “Eventually qualify for U.S. citizenship, but only if they meet certain requirements,” and 8% said, “Eventually qualify for U.S. citizenship, without penalties.” In 2016, the percentages are 17%, 15%, 58%, and 10% respectively—nearly identical to 2012. Moreover, the mean of the feeling thermometer of illegal immigrants was 40.87 in 2012 and 41.46 in 2016—not a statistically or substantively significant difference. For the question on a proposal to allow citizenship to the people brought as children, in 2012, 56% favored, 17% opposed, and 26% neither favored nor opposed. This question was worded differently in 2016. The question asks, “What should happen to immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and have lived here for at least ten years and graduated high school here? Should they be sent back where they came from, or should they be allowed to live and work in the United States?” 75% of respondents said they favor a great deal or moderate amount that these people should stay in the United States, whereas 11.5% said they should be sent back. The change in question-wording makes comparison challenging, but it appears that support for “Dreamers” to stay in the U.S. increased from 2012 to 2016 – at a minimum, it seems safe to conclude that there was not a drop-off in support.

In summary, there is very little change in aggregate public opinion on immigration from 2012 to 2016 and not much evidence of a shift to the right that might reflect a “Trump effect” on immigration attitudes. Of course, some small change did occur in sub-groups within the electorate, mostly resulting in offsetting increases and decreases overall.⁸ Using panel data, we can examine the possibility that aggregate stability in public opinion is masking instability at the individual level. For example, it might be the case that from 2012 to 2016 many Republicans moved to the right on immigration but about as many Democrats and independents moved to the left, yielding little change in the aggregate. This is not what we find in the TAPS data, however.

The data we examine come from the same 949 respondents who answered the question “On the whole, do you think immigration is a good thing or a bad thing for this country today?” in 2012 and in 2016. There is little change in the overall distribution of opinion, with 62.5% of the sample in 2012 saying immigration is a “good thing,” and 64.9% saying so in 2016. Far from a shift to the right, the percentage of those with a positive view of immigration’s impact actually increased slightly.

Table 1 summarizes the individual-level opinion change from 2012 to 2016 on the question asking whether immigration is a good thing or bad thing for the country. Three outcomes are shown in the table: a shift from viewing immigration as a good thing to viewing it as a bad thing; no change in opinion; or a shift from viewing immigration as a bad thing to viewing it as a good thing. Overall, 7.8% moved in the “bad thing” direction, 8.9% moved in the “good thing” direction, and 83.4% expressed no change in opinion about immigration. Among Republicans, shown in the middle column, approximately 10% moved in a negative direction but slightly more, 12%, moved in a positive direction; more than three-fourths (78%) did not change their view of immigration. There was even more stability in opinion among independents and Democrats (86%), and roughly an equal share of respondents moving in the “bad thing” direction (6.8%) and in the “good thing” direction (7.4%). In summary, analysis of TAPS data suggests that the balance of public opinion on immigration changed little from 2012 to 2016. It is not the case that Republicans shifted strongly to holding a more negative view of immigration or that those outside the GOP shifted strongly to a more positive view.

Table 1.

Opinion Shift, “On the whole, do you think immigration is a good thing or a bad thing for this country today?”.

Opinions in 2012 & 2016	Total, %	GOP, %	NON-GOP, %
2012 GOOD, 2016 BAD	7.8	10.0	6.8
NO CHANGE	83.4	77.9	85.8
2012 BAD, 2016 GOOD	8.9	12.1	7.4
TOTAL	100.1	100.0	100.0

Source: 2012 and 2016 TAPS data, n = 949. Entries are column percentages; total may exceed 100% due to rounding.

These results from the TAPS panel data enhance our confidence that the lack of public opinion change from 2012 to 2016 in the ANES cross-sectional data does not obscure a great deal of individual-level change in views about immigration. We can also be more confident that the lack of opinion change found in ANES data is not due to differences in composition of the ANES samples from 2012 to 2016, because when we compare TAPS data from the same individuals in 2012 and 2016, we do not observe a shift in public opinion about immigration.

In the next section, we turn to multivariate analysis to examine more closely the correlates of opinion about immigration to see if shifts occurred from 2012 to 2016.

Multivariate Findings

As a next step, we moved to test our other hypotheses on public attitudes toward illegal immigrants (H₂ through H₄). Table 2 shows the comparison of the regression findings of 2012 and 2016, which reveal important implications for our hypotheses.⁹ First, considering the economic insecurity perspective, the results indicate that the public perception of the national economic outlook is positively associated with the attitudes toward policies related to unauthorized immigrants and feelings toward illegal immigrants in both 2012 and 2016. For instance, those who think the national economy has gotten better in the last year support softer immigration policies toward illegal immigrants, such as eventually qualifying them for citizenship if they meet specific requirements. This finding is consistent with the results of Espenshade and Calhoun (1993) and Citrin et al. (1997). On the other hand, those who think their financial situation has gotten better in the last year support softer immigration policies toward illegal immigrants in 2016; however, the effect is not statistically significant in 2012.

Table 2.

Comparison of Regression Findings 2012-2016 ANES.

Variables	FT Illegal Immigrants		Policy_Dreamers		Policy_Unauthorized_Immigrants
Variables	2012	2016	2012	2016	2012	2016
Economic Threat
Financial situation last year	2.82	11.06***	0.05	−1.18***	0.07	0.44*
Financial situation last year	(2.79)	(3.89)	(0.39)	(0.43)	(0.05)	(0.27)
Financial situation next year	3.16	−2.20	0.00	−0.72	0.02	−0.04
Financial situation next year	(3.39)	(4.15)	(0.41)	(0.49)	(0.06)	(0.29)
National economy last year	7.79**	14.14***	1.21***	−1.24***	0.24***	1.38***
National economy last year	(3.34)	(3.20)	(0.39)	(0.36)	(0.05)	(0.24)
National economy next year	7.06*	7.41**	0.99***	0.60	0.13***	0.21
National economy next year	(3.61)	(3.45)	(0.38)	(0.38)	(0.06)	(0.25)
Economically Vulnerable Group
Unemployed	−1.08	4.65	−0.68**	−0.28	0.05	0.23
Unemployed	(3.10)	(2.91)	(0.32)	(0.41)	(0.21)	(0.24)
Worry financial situation	−4.11	3.24	−0.97***	0.30	−0.11**	0.12
Worry financial situation	(2.66)	(2.87)	(0.31)	(0.33)	(0.04)	(0.20)
Low income (< $30K)	8.18***	6.17*	−0.46	−0.26	0.02	0.08
Low income (< $30K)	(2.81)	(3.68)	(0.32)	(0.35)	(0.20)	(0.24)
Cultural Threat
Emotion seeing flag fly	−5.55	−4.55	−0.34	−0.89	−0.16**	−0.48
Emotion seeing flag fly	(3.82)	(4.44)	(0.43)	(0.65)	(0.07)	(0.33)
Love of country	3.26		0.68		−0.23**
Love of country	(5.85)		(0.66)		(0.10)
Important being American to identity	−6.06		−0.74		−0.18**
Important being American to identity	(5.00)		(0.64)		(0.08)
Follow customs important		−15.69***		0.83**		−0.76***
Follow customs important		(3.15)		(0.42)		(0.23)
Speak English important		−16.93***		0.67		−1.47***
Speak English important		(3.82)		(0.53)		(0.27)
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism	−56.48***	−53.42***	−1.95**	3.83***	−0.01***	−2.85***
Ethnocentrism	(7.77)	(9.04)	(0.86)	(1.27)	(0.00)	(0.67)
Ideology/Party ID
Conservative	−1.9	−5.95***	−0.45**	0.44*	−0.31*	−0.18
Conservative	(1.64)	(2.00)	(0.21)	(0.24)	(0.12)	(0.14)
GOP	−6.81***	−4.16**	−0.16	0.06	−0.05	−0.48***
GOP	(1.86)	(1.89)	(0.23)	(0.22)	(0.14)	(0.13)
Religiosity
Religion important	−1.9	2.46	−0.12	−0.17	−0.05	−0.36**
Religion important	(2.32)	(2.04)	(0.31)	(0.29)	(0.17)	(0.18)
Church attendance	−5.86**	5.57**	−0.35	−0.24	−0.09**	0.44**
Church attendance	(2.53)	(2.39)	(0.28)	(0.33)	(0.04)	(0.20)
Born again	2.34*	−0.07	0.05	0.14	−0.16	−0.14
Born again	(1.40)	(1.64)	(0.18)	(0.19)	(0.10)	(0.13)
Interest Politics/campaigns
Interest campaign	4.13*	1.66	−0.02	−0.07	0.09	0.07
Interest campaign	(2.16)	(2.50)	(0.29)	(0.33)	(0.08)	(0.20)
Follow news on TV	2.89	1.71	−0.12	−0.40	0.08**	0.35
Follow news on TV	(2.26)	(3.40)	(0.27)	(0.38)	(0.02)	(0.24)
Discuss politics	−3.08	−1.60	−0.24	−0.07	−0.02	−0.13
Discuss politics	(2.37)	(2.35)	(0.26)	(0.25)	(0.02)	(0.16)
Attending rally	2.19	0.04	0.39	0.29	−0.09	0.01
Attending rally	(2.28)	(2.61)	(0.29)	(0.29)	(0.16)	(0.20)
Control Variables
Age	2.61	11.13***	0.19	−1.38***	−0.00	0.72***
Age	(3.65)	(3.12)	(0.43)	(0.42)	(0.00)	(0.26)
College educated	1.88	−0.32	−0.13	−0.58***	0.11	0.40***
College educated	(1.45)	(1.46)	(0.18)	(0.21)	(0.10)	(0.11)
Hispanic	15.75***	9.96***	0.30	−0.75	0.71***	1.18***
Hispanic	(2.70)	(3.17)	(0.40)	(0.46)	(0.16)	(0.23)
White	−5.06**	−0.37	0.05	−0.08	−0.13	0.12
White	(2.07)	(2.43)	(0.25)	(0.31)	(0.13)	(0.16)
Parents born outside US	6.63***	8.25***	0.25	−0.46*	−0.04	0.07
Parents born outside US	(2.17)	(2.53)	(0.31)	(0.26)	(0.15)	(0.17)
Female	2.33*	2.70**	0.32**	−0.30	0.26***	0.36***
Female	(1.28)	(1.36)	(0.15)	(0.19)	(0.09)	(0.11)
High income (>$100K)	−1.22	−3.17	0.55*	0.25	0.05	−0.09
High income (>$100K)	(2.45)	(2.69)	(0.31)	(0.31)	(0.18)	(0.19)
Grew up in South	0.67	7.14***	−0.13	0.22	−0.03	0.11
Grew up in South	(2.39)	(2.64)	(0.28)	(0.34)	(0.16)	(0.19)
Income	0.43**	8.45	−0.03	−0.03	0.01	0.35
Income	(0.21)	(7.35)	(0.02)	(0.71)	(0.01)	(0.47)
/cut1					−0.94	−3.60***
/cut1					(0.60)	(0.61)
/cut2					0.21	−2.60***
/cut2					(0.60)	(0.61)
/cut3					3.68***	1.39**
					(0.61)	(0.60)


Constant	59.89***	64.09***	3.01***	−1.21
Constant	(−8.09)	(8.39)	(0.91)	(1.00)
Observations	1,895	2,663	1,895	2,139	1,895	1,578
R-squared	0.30	0.36

Standard errors in parentheses. ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1.

We also included variables identifying economically vulnerable groups in our models to test the labor competition perspective, expecting that people in these groups have negative attitudes toward illegal immigrants. However, we found that the effects of being unemployed and of having a yearly income of less than $30,000 were not statistically significant in predicting answers to all three questions in both 2012 and 2016. Overall, in contrast with the labor market competition theory, those in an economically vulnerable group are not more likely than others to have negative attitudes toward unauthorized immigrants and policies related to them. These results are consistent with the findings of Hainmueller and Hiscox (2010). On the other hand, the findings also indicate that those who worry about their financial situation support harsher policies toward unauthorized immigrants and children brought to the U.S. illegally in 2012, but not in 2016.

Moreover, we also found support for the cultural threat hypothesis. The results show that those who think that being able to speak English and following country customs are essential for being genuinely American are more likely to support harsher policies toward unauthorized immigrants, and an increase in perceptions of the importance of these issues reduces the feeling thermometer number they gave to illegal immigrants. As mentioned earlier, the importance of speaking English and following country customs questions were not asked in 2012. Both questions we used in 2012 – “How do you feel about this country?” and “How important is being American to your identity?” are statistically significant in influencing views on the policy toward unauthorized immigrants but are not statistically significant in predicting the other two dependent variables. Our results are consistent with the findings of Newman et al. (2012, 2013) and Wallace and Zepeda-Millán (2020) who argue that perceived cultural threat from immigrants affects public attitudes toward immigration.

Furthermore, with regards to our hypothesis on ethnocentrism (H₄), we found evidence that ethnocentrism - the preference for and positive affect toward one’s ethnic or racial group relative to all others (Kinder & Kam, 2009) - is an essential driver of attitudes toward unauthorized immigrants and the policies related to them. We found a statistically significant negative association between the ethnocentrism variable and all three dependent variables in both 2012 and 2016. These results are consistent with the findings of Kahm and Kinder (2012) and Valentino et al. (2013).

Also, the results confirm that Republican party identification has a statistically significant negative association with softer policies toward unauthorized immigrants as well as feelings toward illegal immigrants both in 2012 and 2016 (other than the policy toward unauthorized immigrants question in 2012).

The regression findings also suggest that Hispanics and those with a college degree are more likely to support softer policies against unauthorized immigrants and give higher scores in feeling thermometer questions about illegal immigrants. Moreover, those whose parents were born outside of the U.S. have more sympathetic views of unauthorized immigrants both in 2012 and 2016. No clear pattern was found with regard to religiosity, with some indicators emerging as significant in a particular year but not in others. In the 2016 data, those who attend religious services more often were more likely to support softer policies toward unauthorized immigrants, a finding in line with Knoll (2009). However, this relationship was negative in 2012. Similarly, results about born-again identity and the personal importance of religion did not yield a consistent pattern of relationships across the models.¹⁰ To sum up, our analysis of ANES data finds that the predictors of immigration opinion were similar in 2012 and 2016.¹¹

Immigration Views and Candidate Evaluation

Thus far, we have shown that neither the distribution of public opinion about immigration nor the predictors of immigration opinions shifted significantly from 2012 to 2016. A remaining question is the extent to which immigration attitudes influenced the vote decision in 2016 versus 2012. It does not appear that Trump was the cause of change in the distribution of immigration opinion, but perhaps the immigration issue was more influential on the Trump vote than it had been on the Romney vote. To examine this question, we return to the ANES data and employ models similar to those used above to predict immigration attitudes, but this time using candidate choice as the dependent variable (coded vote for the Republican = 1, vote for another candidate = 0). The results of these models are displayed in Figure 5. Logit coefficients are shown with confidence intervals; those overlapping the zero line are not statistically significant.

In both models, the statistically significant predictors of vote choice include several variables that students of voting behavior would expect to exert strong influences: partisanship, ideology, retrospective evaluations of the national economy, and race (with Whites voting more Republican than non-Whites in both elections). However, when examining the immigration policy variables, some differences emerge between the two elections. In 2012, none of the immigration policy variables predicted a vote for Romney; as shown in Figure 5, none of these coefficients could be distinguished from zero. In 2016, in contrast, attitudes about policy toward unauthorized immigrants and about appropriate levels of immigration were statistically significant predictors of voting for Trump. As expected, immigration issues were more influential on the vote decision in 2016 than was the case in 2012.

Not only were the effects of immigration attitudes in 2016 discernably different from zero, but they were also substantively significant. Converting the logit coefficients to predicted marginal probabilities, we can see the impact of immigration policy views. For example, a respondent who chose the option “Make all unauthorized immigrants felons and send them back to their home country” had a probability of .58 of supporting Trump, all else being equal. In contrast, a respondent who chose “Allow unauthorized immigrants to remain in the U.S. and eventually qualify for citizenship without penalties” had just a .47 probability of voting for Trump. Similarly, a respondent indicating the view that the number of immigrants allowed to come into the U.S. should be “decreased a lot” had a .58 probability of voting for Trump, compared to a probability of just .41 for someone who said immigration levels should be “increased a lot.” Unlike in 2012, immigration issues in 2016 were able to move voters across the threshold of supporting the Republican candidate.

Discussion and Conclusion

This study contributes to the literature on public opinion about immigration in several ways. First, we found that the 2016 Republican Presidential Nominee, Donald Trump, used immigration-related words much more often than the 2012 Nominee, Mitt Romney. A content analysis of the N.Y. Times on immigration-related news from 2006–2016 revealed that from 2015–2016, immigration-related news coverage significantly increased. The comparison of public response to “the most important problem that the nation faces” in 2012 and 2016 ANES and Gallup monthly surveys shows evidence of the media’s agenda-setting function. During the 2016 Presidential campaign period, with the increased elite discourse and media coverage, five times more people mentioned immigration as the MIP. However, it should be noted that the overall percentage of respondents mentioning immigration as the MIP in 2016 remained below 5%. Immigration became more important but was still far from the most salient issue in 2016.

In addition, we tested three theoretical explanations that were offered in previous studies of public opinion towards immigration and immigrants. These are: immigrants create economic insecurity among the native-born population; immigrants are viewed as a threat to American culture; and ethnocentrism - a psychological predisposition that divides the world into in-groups and out-groups—into “us” and “them.” The results from our multivariate models suggest that we found some support for all three perspectives in both 2012 and 2016. However, we did not find evidence that the people in an economically vulnerable group, those who are unemployed or those with a yearly income of less than $30,000, have a statistically significant difference in attitudes toward illegal immigrants or policies toward unauthorized immigrants or children who were brought illegally to the United States. Importantly, we did not find significant shifts in the predictors of immigration attitudes from 2012 to 2016. The findings from 2012 suggest that anti-immigration and anti-immigrant views among Republicans predated Donald Trump’s candidacy and were not a result of his campaign rhetoric. Trump was not an anti-immigration evangelist converting people to his side of the issue as much as he was preaching to the Republican choir.

Further, we compared the determinants of vote choice in 2012 with those in 2016 and found that immigration issues were statistically significant predictors only in 2016. In logit models of vote choice controlling for a host of variables including demographic characteristics, geographic location, religion, ideology, partisanship, and evaluations of the economy, we found that in 2016 attitudes about policy toward unauthorized immigrants as well as attitudes about the number of immigrants allowed into the U.S. exerted independent effects that were statistically and substantively significant. So, although the overall distribution of public opinion on immigration policy changed very little from 2012 to 2016, there is evidence that the influence of immigration attitudes on vote choice grew. All of this suggests that Trump’s candidacy did not persuade so much as it activated. Trump did not significantly alter public opinion on immigration in 2016, but his emphasis on the issue was attractive to many Republican and conservative voters who already held anti-immigration views.

The current study examines data from two presidential election campaigns, but it would be helpful to continue to investigate the way candidates address the immigration issue in future elections. Further research on public opinion about immigrants and immigration that examines the effect of increased elite discourse and high media coverage of immigration would be helpful to understanding the bigger picture of attitudes toward undocumented immigrants and immigration in general. As immigration continues to be a controversial topic on the U.S. domestic political agenda, more research in this area is necessary.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Public Attitudes Toward Immigration: Was There a Trump Effect?

Supplemental Material for Public Attitudes Toward Immigration: Was There a Trump Effect? by Mustafa Sagir and Stephen T. Mockabee in American Politics Research

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Mustafa Sagir

Stephen T. Mockabee

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author Biographies

Mustafa Sagir is a PhD candidate at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Cincinnati. His current work focuses on public attitudes toward immigration and immigrants in the United States.

Stephen T. Mockabee is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Graduate Certificate in Public Opinion and Survey Research, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Cincinnati.

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