Slide 1: The 10^th Congressional District in Georgia is a heavy republican district. Their past two representative have been Republican, and according to the 2018 Cook Partisan Voter Index, “for this district was R+15, meaning that in the previous two presidential elections, this district’s results were 15 percentage points more Republican than the national average. This made Georgia’s 10th Congressional District the 83rd-most Republican nationally.”¹ The two representatives shared similarities in their ideology on federal policy, however, in both cases immigration was not of great concern. In Hice’s case immigration policy only accounts for 12% of his voting activity.²

Slide 2: Existing research on relevant to the subject suggests a highly partisan driven policy initiative. Due to the relatively low number of Hispanic/Latino voters in the district (%10<), there is very little pressure from his constituency to align with favorable immigration policy. Instead, Hice is more likely to vote for restrictionist immigration policy that falls in line with his parties ideology. This is further supported by FiveThirtyEight who observed that Hice votes in favor of Trump policy 89.6% of the time.³ There are limits to this, however, as Hice voted against the Republican driven Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2018 where compromises made in order to obtain greater support from both sides.

Slide 3: Policy Predictions for this district are relatively straight forward according to relevant research. Due to the largely white and black demographic in his district, Hice will not face much resistance from the constituency when voting for restrictive immigration policy. Therefore, Hice is likely to vote in favor of such policies, while additionally supporting federal immigration authorities in his district. This is supported by the partisanship hypothesis found in the Wong 2017 study, as well as the Wong 2012 study that suggests larger districts are more likely to cooperate federal authorities. Lastly, due to a growing number of Hispanic and Latino population it is possible that the wage competition hypothesis could play a factor in Hice’s voting decisions in order to maintain the support of local voters.

Slide 4: Lastly, when analyzing Hice’s voting record it is apparent that immigration is not a significant factor in his policy voting. From 2014 until 2019, immigration voting has accounted for 12% of his activity. Additionally, of the 37 bills Hice has sponsored only 4 bills which pertain to immigration issues. That being said of the 9 immigration bills Hice has participated in voting for 7 were restrictionist and he voted in favor of all 7 of these bills.⁴ While Hice often does vote alongside his party on these issues, immigration does not seems to play a large role in his online presence. From 2014 to the present, Hice has only tweeted on immigration 24 times. The content of his tweets are in line with the Republican stance on immigration though. The general themes of his tweets reinforce Republican’s general anti-immigrant sentiment, and show that he does not differ from his parties ideology.

Link to Slides: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1F5MlInd5IVLUmx2VE1tNXDs9O0jvDrXe

-Jay Rolader