From a Distance: Geographic Proximity, Partisanship, and Public Attitudes toward the U.S.–Mexico Border Wall

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912919854135
• Date: 01 September 2020
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912919854135

Political Research Quarterly

2020, Vol. 73(3) 740 –754

© 2019 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912919854135

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Article

Introduction

The wall between the United States and Mexico is not

new. The first piece of the fence between these two coun-

tries came to life a year after the Gadsden Purchase of

1853 (Ganster and Lorey 2008), and today, the wall is a

reality across more than a third of the continental border

between the United States and Mexico. What is different,

however, is that the potential new construction of the wall

has become one of today’s most contentious political

issues. Despite the wall’s prominent place in recent dis-

course, a unique study of the determinants of public opin-

ion toward it, a study taking into account individuals’

partisanship and geographic proximity to the border

itself, has yet to emerge.

Indeed, an abundance of literature deals with the link

between the border wall and public opinion, but it does so

only indirectly through topics such as national security,

border policing, or illegal immigration as a component of

the “war on terror” (Adamson 2006; Andreas 2009;

Gravelle 2018; Lebowitz and Podheiser 2002; Spencer

2008). At first glance, this gap is surprising. After all,

immigration-related issues are highly partisan and, in

case of the wall, have clear, geographically bounded

impacts. Whereas the vast majority of studies includes

party identification as a control variable, it has “not been

a central feature in research on immigration attitudes”

(Hainmueller and Hopkins 2014, 237), although there are

some notable exceptions (Branton et al. 2007; Gravelle

2016; Hawley 2011; Hopkins 2018). It is also surprising

that given the definite location and impact(s) that the wall

has on the lives of border residents, the treatment of geo-

graphic distance remains atheoretical (Enos 2017;

Hopkins 2018). It is of central importance, therefore, to

ask whether partisanship, geographic distance, and their

interaction condition public attitudes toward the border

wall, even in an era of social media and the 24/7 news

cycle.1

Using geocoded data from a 2017 national representa-

tive survey, I show that self-identified Republicans

(including partisan leaners) far away from the border

(i.e., those who do not live at the border, more than 100

miles away) are more likely to support building the wall

with Mexico than Republicans living in closer proximity

to it, even after controlling for traditional predictors of

attitudes toward immigration-related issues, such as

income, education, race/ethnicity, place of birth, age, sex,

Mexican-descent percentage of the county population,

levels of crime to control for contextual effects associated

854135PRQXXX10.1177/1065912919854135Political Research QuarterlyCortina

research-article2019

1University of Houston, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jeronimo Cortina, Department of Political Science, Center for

Mexican American Studies, University of Houston, 3553 Cullen

Boulevard Room 323, Houston, TX 77204-3001, USA.

Email: jcortina@central.uh.edu

From a Distance: Geographic Proximity,

Partisanship, and Public Attitudes

toward the U.S.–Mexico Border Wall

Jeronimo Cortina1

Abstract

The wall along the U.S.–Mexico border has become one of the most controversial issues in the immigration debate.

Although the American public is often aligned with partisan predispositions, often ignored is the role that geographic

distance to the border plays in forming attitudes. This paper explores the role of proximity, partisanship, and their

interaction as determinants of public attitudes toward the border wall. This paper argues that geographic distance has

two effects on public attitudes: as a catalyst for direct contact and as a dynamic filter that shapes how people process

information and understand a particular place or policy. Using geocoded survey data from 2017, this paper shows that

as the distance to the U.S.–Mexico border increases, Republicans are more likely to support building a wall along the

entire border with Mexico due to a lack of direct contact, supplanting direct information with partisan beliefs.

Keywords

border wall, geographic distance, public opinion