Title Slide

Abigail Spanberger represents Virginia’s seventh congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. The district is located in the suburbs of Richmond, VA, and its representative is a member of the Democratic Party.

Map from: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/VA/7

Photo from: https://abigailspanberger.com/

Slide 1

My main prediction going into this research was that I would find respondents in VA-07 to be more anti-immigrant than respondents in the rest of Virginia given the district’s Republican lean. In 2013, Casellas and Leal showed that partisanship is the “only consistent factor” that explains voting on immigration legislation in Congress, which really relates to the district’s representatives. However, the link between Republican representatives being anti-immigrant and their constituency is likely that the district favors a Republican representative, thus indicating their anti-immigrant sentiment, as is the case historically in VA-07.  In 2018, VA-07 elected a Democrat, but the district has a long history of leaning Republican with Trump achieving a victory in the district in 2016 by +6 percentage points. In 2014, the district voted out incumbent Congressman and Republican Party leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary election and eventually replaced him with an even more conservative Tea Party Republican Dave Brat. Perhaps then, with Trump in the White House in 2018, the district felt it could elect a Democrat because without many immigrants in the district, the voters felt their immigration concerns were being addressed by Trump. In addition, with such a small immigrant population, it is likely Spanberger would not betray the constituency’s wishes and support more restrictive immigration policies. Therefore, the districts attitudes on immigration would still be negative and likely more negative than other parts of the state. Also, it is likely that the district’s demographics negatively impact the residents’ immigration attitudes. Given that the greater the immigrant population in an area the less restrictive the policies are (Wong 2017), here the policies are likely to be restrictive given the minority immigrant population, thereby creating an anti-immigrant sentiment in the district. Additionally, as Assignment 2 showed, the district has been becoming less white, and the Hispanic/Latino population has doubled in the last decade. As Rocha et. al (2011) showed, ethnic concerns spark anti-immigrant sentiment among Anglos, which is based on the size of the native-born Hispanic population. Therefore, even though Hispanic/Latinos are still a minority in VA-07, the population increase likely sparked more anti-immigrant sentiment in the district.

Election info from: https://www.politico.com; https://www.newyorktimes.com

Slide 2

I used data from the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Elections Study (CCES) to analyze public opinion around immigration in VA-07 and compared it to the rest of VA. This survey is unique in that it aims to study midterm congressional elections, which in 2018 proved to be pivotal in VA-07 with the election of Abigail Spanberger in such a traditionally Republican district. Therefore, the 2018 CCES is useful for testing my predictions here since it studies attitudes around important issues such as immigration during an important midterm election for VA-07. My first step was cleaning the data to include only potentially relevant variables such as the question numbers from the pre-election questionnaire, Hispanic origin/descent, and race. This took the data from 60,000 observations down to 1,749 in VA and 190 in VA-07, specifically. The top section of this slide shows the question numbers from the pre-election questionnaire with a short description of the policy the question asked if respondents supported or opposed, and the full text is available online in the pre-election survey on Harvard’s Dataverse website. The bottom section of this slide includes the relevant variables I created from the data in order to see what affects support for increased border wall funding in VA. For instance, I made a dummy variable for whether or not the respondent is from VA-07 to see if living in VA-07 makes an individual more likely to support increased border wall funding. The first phase of my analysis though was that for each of the immigration policy questions in the pre-election questionnaire, I studied the percentage of respondents from VA-07 who supported or opposed the policy and compared this to the percentage of respondents from the other VA congressional districts who supported or opposed the policy. I then conducted a logistic regression to see which independent variables affected support for increased border wall funding.

Slide 3

This slide presents the results of my analysis of the support and opposition to the immigration policies asked about in the 2018 CCES pre-election survey. Overall, there is not a great difference between VA-07 respondents’ immigration policy attitudes and those of the rest of Virginia respondents. The greatest difference between VA-07 and the rest of VA came in support for increasing border security by increasing spending to $25 billion and building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. 44.1% of respondents in VA-07 supported the policy compared to only 37.4% of respondents in the other Virginia congressional districts. This is interesting given the fact that the percentage of the Hispanic population in VA-07 is a fraction of the white population. Perhaps then VA-07 is a bit more anti-immigrant than the rest of Virginia, but the information here is insufficient to make such a claim. It is likely that when it comes to some policies, like the one here, which Donald Trump has pioneered, VA-07 is more anti-immigrant than the rest of the state. I therefore decided to zoom in on support for border wall funding in order to see what characteristics, or variables, impact respondents’ support for the proposed policy.

Slide 4

Here I show the results of my logistic regression in which I hoped to study if living in VA-07, gender, being Hispanic, being non-white and non-Hispanic, the size of the Hispanic population in respondents’ district, being a Democrat, or being a Republican affected support for increased border wall funding. The only statistically significant variables were gender, non-white and non-Hispanic, Hispanic population in respondents’ districts, being a Democrat, and being a Republican. This then shows that being a man, being non-white and non-Hispanic, the larger the district’s immigrant population, and being either a Democrat or Republican makes respondents more likely to support increased border wall funding. The fact that being a Democrat or a Republican is related to support for increased border wall funding is particularly interesting given the Republican Party’s reputation for being anti-immigrant and the Democratic Party being known as the political party that protects immigrants. A possible explanation for this finding could be that Democrats in VA-07 are more conservative than the overall Democratic Party. This cannot be verified here, but it is a possible explanation and an interesting path to study in future research. A central finding here though is that living in VA-07 is not a significant predictor of support for increased border wall funding, and therefore, my original prediction cannot be supported in full. The regression shows that living in VA-07 does not make a person more anti-immigrant, at least on the issue of border wall funding, but based on the percentage of respondents in VA-07 who supported/opposed various immigration-related policies, especially border wall funding support, respondents from VA-07 do tend to be slightly more anti-immigrant than the rest of the state. Perhaps this is due to the ethnic concern based on the percentage of the population that is Hispanic/Latino. The regression shows that the greater the percentage of the population in a district that is Hispanic/Latino, individuals are more likely to support increased border wall funding. While the Hispanic/Latino population in VA-07 is small, it is larger than about half of the other districts in the state, and its growth over the last decade could have sparked ethnic concerns and in turn anti-immigrant sentiment. Considering all of this, it is clear then that Spanberger should continue to be the quiet immigrant-rights supporter she has been since entering the U.S. House of Representatives in January. Given the Republican lean of the district which corresponds to the greater percentage of respondents who supported increased border wall funding, this is the best approach for Democrat Abigail Spanberger to support immigrants while protecting her seat.

Honor Code:

This assignment represents my own work in accordance with University regulations. – Morgan Bell

Abigail Spanberger represents Virginia’s seventh congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. The district is located in the suburbs of Richmond, VA, and its representative is a member of the Democratic Party.

Map from: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/VA/7

Photo from: https://abigailspanberger.com/

This slide shows the demographic change of VA-07 from 2007-2017 — the 11^th Congress to the 115^th Congress. Therefore, these district demographics are from before Abigail Spanberger was elected to represent VA-07. Clearly, the district has remained incredibly white over the decade, yet the percentage of the population that is white has decreased by 6.3 percentage points. The Asian-American population has been increasing relatively steadily, and the Hispanic/Latino population was also increasing until it began to drop off again between 2015 and 2017 (decreased by 2.1 percentage points). It is important to note the comparatively large increase in the Hispanic/Latino population between 2013 and 2015 (a 4.2 percentage point increase). This increase coincided with the district’s increasing conservatism, as in the 2014 midterm elections, the VA-07 electorate voted out incumbent Republican Eric Cantor — a party leader — and replaced him with the ultra-conservative Tea Party Republican Dave Brat (see Assignment 1). This is important in the context of the increasing foreign-born population in the district. While the district is overwhelmingly comprised of native-born Americans, the foreign-born population has been increasing since 2013 — the same year the district experienced a spike in its Hispanic/Latino population. Perhaps then the relationship between the immigrant population and the Hispanic/Latino population prompted the district to become more conservative, which as the next slide will show, is consistent with existing literature.

Demographics information from: https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_1YR_S0501&prodType=table

Existing research on immigration and demographic change shows a great deal of white resistance. As Enos (2014) showed in his experiment, minor demographic change in an area results in more exclusionary attitudes. However, this is not the only effect of an increasing minority population as Craig and Richeson (2017) also showed that an increase in the Hispanic population can motivate a more conservative ideology among the rest of the population in the area. This is consistent with the fact that the more conservative party — the Republican Party — is associated with more restrictive immigrant policies (see Assignment 1). Perhaps then, this is why the VA-07 electorate became even more conservative and voted for the more conservative candidate in the 2014 midterm elections after experiencing an increase in the Hispanic/Latino population. Further support for this comes from Newman (2012) who found that an increase in the immigrant population in a low-immigrant community triggers the white population’s opposition to immigration. This is because a relatively recent change in the immigrant population is more noticeable in a low-immigrant community like VA-07 rather in an area with a high immigrant population already. Of course, VA-07 is largely comprised of native-born residents, so Rocha et al.’s (2011) finding that anti-immigrant sentiments among Anglos result from ethnic concerns which are driven by the size of the native-born Latino population. This could have also contributed to the shift seen in 2014 since even though the immigrant population in VA-07 increased, the native-born population has been an overwhelming majority. The media also does not help improve the situation for immigrants since the media tends to portray immigrants in a negative light, showing them as undocumented, which increases hostility towards immigration (Farris and Mohammed 2018). Therefore, even without a wealth of literature on the immigrant experience, the existing literature about immigration and demographic change as well as how the media represents immigrants shows that immigrants often have negative experiences. As immigrants attempt to integrate, they are met by the exclusionary and conservative attitudes and negative media environment scholars have identified. Even though VA-07 elected a Democrat in 2018, it is still unlikely — given the history of conservatism in the district — that the situation for immigrants has improved.

Considering the demographic change in the district and the existing literature on immigration, demographic change, and the media, which inform an understanding of immigrant experiences, several predictions can be made. For the characteristic of demographic change prompting more exclusionary and conservative attitudes, the impact is on public opinion of the other residents in the community. This also encompasses an increase in immigration since the relevant studies about immigration and attitudes have focused on racial and ethnic minorities which then change the area of interest’s demographics. Given the demographics of the district over the last decade and the existing research, for the outcome of public opinion I predicted that VA-07 is full of anti-immigrant sentiment and a conservative ideology. This is due to the fact that both the Asian-American and Hispanic/Latino populations have increased over the last decade (despite the slight 2017 decline for the Hispanic/Latino population) and how the district has consistently elected conservative candidates until 2018, when Spanberger narrowly won her election. Therefore, most of VA-07 has exclusionary attitudes as a result of this demographic change and the residents also likely support restrictive immigration policies, consistent with the district’s Republican lean. In terms of the media coverage immigrants receive, which focuses on their legal status and thus presents them negatively as undocumented, the outcome here is media coverage, and the predictions are that in VA-07, the media will emphasize immigrants’ documentation and frame them as criminals. This would be consistent with the literature as well as with the district’s Republicanism which hints to a negative immigration attitude and thus media coverage. Of course, the media can also be influencing VA-07’s immigration attitudes, which is why the two outcomes of public opinion and media coverage must be studied to see how immigrant experiences may be impacted. As immigrants face hostility and negative attitudes socially and through media coverage, the outcome in question is immigrant experiences, and I predicted that as immigrants try to integrate into VA-07 they will face social hostility in addition to a lack of government support. In turn, this hostility and lack of institutional support create an overall negative experience for immigrants in VA-07.

I plan to focus my future research on public opinion, specifically. I predict the Republican lean of VA-07, which was found in Assignment 1, makes public opinion in VA-07 more anti-immigrant than the rest of the country, despite the fact that in 2018 the district elected a Democrat. To study this, I will use the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) from 2016. During this time, the district was still being represented by Tea Party Republican Dave Brat, showing how conservative the district was becoming after experiencing some demographic change. The CMPS is a survey conducted after each election to measure the attitudes of voters and non-voters on a variety of political social issues, one of which is immigration. I will specifically focus on the importance of addressing immigration, how respondents feel undocumented immigrants should be handled (focusing on how “undocumented” vs. “illegal” changes the responses), immigration’s economic impact, and which party is viewed as better on the issue of immigration. I hope to study these across party first of all, and also gender, news consumption, and religiosity. I will then compare the results of my statistical analysis to that of the country overall. I will adjust the scope of the study as necessary as I proceed through the research process.

Honor Code

This assignment represents my own work in accordance with University regulations

– Morgan Bell