Demographic Change, Latino Countermobilization, and the Politics of Immigration in US Senate Campaigns

• Author: Tyler Reny
• Date: 01 December 2017
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912917713155
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917713155

Political Research Quarterly

2017, Vol. 70(4) 735 –748

© 2017 University of Utah

Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1065912917713155

journals.sagepub.com/home/prq

Article

On October 9, just under a month before the 2014 mid-

term elections, Republican US Senate candidate Scott

Brown took to New Hampshire’s WGIR talk radio to

hammer home a central campaign theme: that “illegal”

immigrants were threatening America’s national security.

By October, generic anti-immigrant appeals had given

way to a far more dramatic style. Brown warned WGIR

listeners that undocumented immigrants with Ebola

might be crossing the US–Mexican border. “One of the

reasons I’ve been so adamant about closing our border,

because if people are coming through normal channels,

can you imagine what they can do through a porous bor-

der?” (Santana 2014). Nearly 2,000 miles west of New

Hampshire, Republican US Senate candidate Cory

Gardner ran an uphill battle against Democratic incum-

bent Senator Mark Udall in Colorado, a state with over

one million Latinos. Immigration appeals were conspicu-

ously absent from Gardner’s campaign. Given Colorado’s

proximity to the US–Mexican border, sizable Latino pop-

ulation, and frontier conservative roots, we might expect

immigration to emerge as a potent issue in Colorado, but

not in New Hampshire, a racially homogeneous state nes-

tled in New England. What explains these divergent

approaches to campaign messaging?

More specifically, under what conditions do politi-

cians politicize immigration in electoral campaigns? Past

research has examined the role of racial attitudes in elec-

toral campaigns (Mendelberg 2001; Tesler and Sears

2010), how immigration attitudes are formed (Brader,

Valentino, and Suhay 2008; Kinder and Kam 2010;

Nicholson 2012; Scheve and Slaughter 2001; Valentino,

Brader, and Jardina 2013), what drives variation in the

political salience of immigration (Brader, Valentino, and

Suhay 2008; Hopkins 2010; Newman, Hartman, and

Taber 2014), and the role that immigration plays in shap-

ing party coalitions (Hajnal and Rivera 2014), yet none

have examined the supply side of immigration appeals.

How are shifting demographics shaping modern political

campaigns?

Nearly every county in the United States has been

experiencing growing Latino populations over the last

several decades. Politicizing these demographic shifts, I

713155PRQXXX10.1177/1065912917713155Political Research QuarterlyReny

research-article2017

1University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Corresponding Author:

Tyler Reny, Department of Political Science, University of California,

Los Angeles, 4289 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.

Email: ttreny@ucla.edu

Demographic Change, Latino

Countermobilization, and the Politics

of Immigration in US Senate Campaigns

Tyler Reny1

Abstract

Demographic changes from decades of mass immigration and shifts in internal migration patterns are upending the

traditional racial composition of many states throughout the United States, transforming the American electorate,

and increasing both the political salience of immigration and the racial salience of Latinos. Politicizing these visible

demographic shifts has become an increasingly common strategy by both Democrats and Republicans with potentially

significant electoral effects. While many have examined the impact of these demographic changes on dominant receiving

populations’ attitudes, few have examined how changing demographics are shaping immigration politics in electoral

campaigns. Specifically, under what conditions do political candidates politicize demographic change? I hypothesize

that both political and demographic considerations drive variation in immigration appeals. I test my hypotheses using

a novel dataset of candidate campaign websites from 2010, 2012, and 2014 US Senate primary and general elections.

I argue that racial party cleavages increase the electoral temptation of immigration appeals but it is the interaction

between state-level Latino population growth, electoral competition, and Latino voters that determines campaign

strategy more broadly and moderates the use of pro- and anti-immigrant appeals.

Keywords

campaigns, elections, campaign appeals, immigration politics, demographic change, Latinos