Ethnic Change, Concern over Immigration, and Approval of State Government

Abstract

The popularity and approval of a governor among their state citizenry is a central form of political capital that animates the informal power key to their legislative success and bolsters their prospects for reelection. Within the extant literature exploring the sources of approval of state executives, the lion's share of the work focuses on the deleterious effects on approval of a poorly performing national and state economy. In the present article, we rely on the same logic underlying the economic-centered research—namely, that unhappy citizens blame governors and state governments for their discontent—but focus on the impact on approval of an entirely separate and relatively unexplored domain of life in a state: ethno-demographics. This article advances the hypothesis that citizen discontent over drastic ethnic change in their local environment is politicized as concern over immigration, which in turn serves as a concrete political issue through which personal discontent over increased ethnic diversity is translated into lower approval of state government. This hypothesis is tested within the context of the state of California using pooled statewide survey data. Our analyses demonstrate that growth in the Hispanic population within a respondent's county of residence significantly increases concern over immigration within the state, and that concern over immigration significantly decreases approval of state government across the board, including the governor, the state legislature, and one's local state representatives.