White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics

257 Pages·2017·3.021 MB·English

by  Marisa Abrajano, Zoltan L. Hajnal

WHITE BACKLASH

WHITE BACKLASH
Immigration, Race, and American Politics
Marisa Abrajano & Zoltan L. Hajnal
P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2015 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton,
New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number 2014043799
ISBN 978– 0- 691– 16443– 4
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Electra LT Std
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Contents
Illustrations vii
Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
PART I Theory 23
Chapter 1
A Theory of Immigration Backlash Politics 25
PART II Views on Immigration and Defection to
the Republican Party 61
Chapter 2
Immigration, Latinos, and the Transformation
of White Partisanship 63
Chapter 3
How Immigration Shapes the Vote 88
PART III U nderstanding the Roots of the Backlash 113
Chapter 4
The Geography of the Immigration Backlash 115
Chapter 5
Media Coverage of Immigration and White
Macropartisanship 154
PART IV The Consequences 181
Chapter 6
The Policy Backlash 183
Conclusion
Implications for A Deeply Divided United States 201
References 217
Index 233
Additional materials can be found in the online appendix at http://press
.princeton.edu/titles/10516.html

Illustrations
Figure 1.1 The Changing Racial Composition of the
Democratic and Republican Parties: Nonwhite
Share of the Presidential Vote by Party and Year 42
Figure 2.1 Immigrant Views and Partisan Choice:
(a) Democratic and (b) Republican 67
Figure 2.2 White Partisanship over Time 81
Figure 3.1 White Republican Vote in Congress 92
Figure 3.2 Attitudes toward Undocumented Immigrants and
Vote Choice:
(a) Republican Vote for President,
(b) Republican Vote for Congress, and
(c) Republican Vote for Senate 95
Figure 5.1 Volume of Immigration News Coverage, by Year
and Quarter 165
Figure 5.2 Proportion of Negative versus Positive Frames,
by Year and Quarter 168
Figure 5.3 Average Number of Latino Immigrant Frames,
by Year and Quarter 168
Figure 5.4 Percentage of Democratic Identifiers, 1980– 2011 170
Figure 6.1 The Effect of Latino Context on
Corrections Spending 193
Figure C.1 Demographic Divides in US Politics,
2012 House Vote 210

Tables
Table 1.1 Attitudes toward Different Elements of Immigration:
Correlation Coefficients 53
Table 2.1 Views on Immigration and White Partisanship 70
Table 2.2 Assessing Causality: Immigration’s Temporal
Impact on Party Identification in 2009 79
Table 2.3 The Impact of Aggregate Immigration Views on
White Macropartisanship 83
Table 3.1 Views on Immigration and the White
Presidential Vote 98
Table 3.2 Views on Latinos and the Vote: Alternate Measures 104
Table 4.1 The Effect of Latino Context on Immigration and
Social Welfare Views 132
Table 4.2 The Effect of Latino Context on Health Care and
Criminal Justice Views 135
Table 4.3 The Effect of Latino Context on White Ideology,
Party Identification, and Vote Choice 139
Table 5.1 The Effect of Immigration Frames on the White
Macropartisanship 172
Table 5.2 The Effect of Immigration Frames on White
Macropartisanship (Dependent Variable:
Democrats Relative to Republicans) 175
Table 5.3 The Effect of Immigration Frames on White
Macropartisanship (before and after IRCA) 176
Table 6.1 The Effect of Latino Context on State Spending 192
Table 6.2 The Effect of Latino Context on State Taxation 195
Table C.1 Weak Partisan Ties among Latinos and
Asian Americans 214