Unauthorized Immigration and Electoral Outcomes

Nicole Baerg, Julie Hotchkiss and Myriam Quispe-Agnoli ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: How do inflows of unauthorized immigrants shape elections? Political economy theories often yield competing predictions and mixed empirical results. The main hurdle of empirically evaluating the impact of unauthorized immigrants on election outcomes is finding reliable data that can measure unauthorized immigration flows over time. Using a unique methodology for identifying undocumented workers across counties in the state of Georgia in the United States, we find a positive relationship between the share of the county's workforce that is unauthorized and the share of votes going to Republicans in elections. Furthermore, we show that this effect is more pronounced for the presence of unauthorized immigrants than Hispanics; is stronger in counties with higher median household income; and is substantively larger in U.S. Congressional elections than Gubernatorial or Senatorial elections. We discuss which political economy theories are most consistent with this set of findings.

Keywords: Elections; International Migration; Undocumented; Unauthorized (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mig and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/60505/1/MPRA_paper_60505.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/64839/12/MPRA_paper_64839.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/64936/12/MPRA_paper_64839.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/64936/20/MPRA_paper_64936.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

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