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Title: Does Exposure to Migration Cause an Electoral Backlash? Evidence from the Mariel Boatlift

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2019

ISBN: 92407493a73

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Abstract: Does exposure to a mass migration event cause citizens to vote against incumbents? I offer an answer to this question by focussing on one of the largest acute periods of migration in the US, the case of the Mariel Boatlift during which roughly 125,000 Cubans fled to South Florida. I estimate the effect of this migration using the synthetic control method and fixed effects regressions with a panel of county-level presidential election results and archival precinct-level election results. I find that, while Miami voters dramatically shifted to support Republican presidential candidates following the Boatlift, this shift was concentrated in overwhelmingly Cuban neighborhoods and that Cuban neighborhoods in a county with much less direct exposure increased Republican support to a similar degree. I also present evidence that this shift did not extend to voting in US House elections. These findings suggests that, in this case, direct exposure to migration did not translate into the large change in voting behavior predicted by the intergroup threat hypothesis and a number of economic models of voter behavior.

Url: http://web.stanford.edu/~dthomp/papers/Thompson_Boatlift.pdf

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Authors: Thompson, Daniel M

Publisher: Stanford University

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Migration and Immigration

Countries: United States