Immigration Status, Immigrant Family Ties, and Support for the Democratic Party

Abstract

ObjectiveI test the hypothesis that immigration status itself is a predictor of Democratic Party affiliation and vote choice, even controlling for other attributes. I further test whether having immigrant parents and grandparents has a similar effect.MethodTo examine these questions, I created single‐ and multilevel models of party affiliation and vote choice using the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study.ResultsEven after controlling for a myriad of individual and contextual attributes, immigration status was a statistically significant and substantively important predictor of Democratic affiliation. This was also true of the children and grandchildren of immigrants, but this effect weakened over multiple generations.ConclusionImmigration status itself appears to be an important determinant of voting patterns, which is highly consequential, given the large and growing foreign‐born population in the United States.