January 24, 2013

Hawley: "Do [Immigration] Restrictionist Policies Cost Congressional Republicans Votes?"

George Hawley, a political scientist teaching at the U. of Houston, has a trove of research papers on extremely relevant topics. For example:
Issue Voting and Immigration: Do Restrictionist Policies Cost Congressional Republicans Votes?  
Forthcoming in Social Science Quarterly 
Objective: I test the hypothesis that Latino voters were less likely to support Republican incumbents with strong anti-immigration records in the 2006 Congressional elections in comparison to Republicans with less restrictive records. I also test whether non-Hispanic white voters were similarly sensitive to incumbent immigration records when determining vote choice.  
Method: To examine these questions, I created hierarchical models in which incumbent immigration records, individual views on immigration, and an interaction between the two were used to predict vote choice in the 2006 midterm elections. Individual-level data were provided by the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study and incumbent immigration records were provided by NumbersUSA.  
Results: This analysis found little [or] no evidence suggesting that Latino voters are less likely to support Republican incumbents with anti-immigration records. There was evidence suggesting that vote choice among non-Hispanic white was influenced by incumbent records on immigration, but the effect varied according to the respondent’s own views on immigration.  
Conclusion: This study found no evidence that incumbent Republicans could increase their share of the Latino vote by embracing less restrictive immigration policies. In fact, doing so may cost them votes among non-Hispanic whites.

In other words, the conventional wisdom about Hispanics and Republican politicians is wrong.

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

In fact, doing so may cost them votes among non-Hispanic whites.

May?

Anonymous said...

"In other words the coventional wisdom about hispanics and Republican politicians is wrong."

The conventional wisdom is almost always wrong about everything.

Anonymous said...

Well, another thing here ua Karl Rove's view of getting immirgant groups like the Repubicians did against William James Byrant. Byrant was a liberal evangelical and Catholic immirgants thought he was going to impose his religious views on them, so McKinley to Taft received higher votes among Catholics. Today its the opposite Republicans are heavily evangelical and some groups are turn off. That's why I think Karl Rove is wrong thinking Mexicans and Central Americans are like the whites in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Prof. Woland said...

What is costs them is money.

Anonymous said...

Well, another way to stop Republicans is show data on the higher support of labor unions among Hispanics since today's Republicans are hostile more so to unions. This I'm sure is not known by them.

Anonymous said...

Very reasonable if you just put yourself in the place of a typical Mexican American citizen. He is typically unskilled and lives amongst many of his same ethnic group.

He's not particularly interested in politics, just like most of his fellow Anglo citizens. But he does realize that a great influx of Mexican illegals will put downward pressure on his wages And lead to his being looked at suspiciously by his fellow Anglicisms.

So, although he has sympathy for his Mexican brethren he just as soon they didn't come here; he doesn't really need their company.

He doesn't want to vote for Republicans in general, because he and some of his relatives rely on welfare of one sort or another and he's afraid that the Republicans would reduce that welfare.

But as for Republican immigration policy it all averages out to his being fairly neutral about that.

Of course that's not the position of his nominal "leaders" who are hostile to Anglos and gain more power as the number of Mexican-Americans increases.

Robert Hume

Anonymous said...

What's dumber than a Republican is a libertarian which is open borders hogs. Some like Ron Paul once talked about a fence but drop it. Libertarians are another dumbed group rising in the Republican Party because of the Tea Party that complains about Illegal immirgants but will not do much since business interest should be allowed to hire who they please.

Anonymous said...

The conventional wisdom is almost always wrong about everything.

By conventional wisdom we mean the manufactured 'wisdom' of media/politics rather than common sense.

eah said...

How doomed is the US? Never in this sort of discussion do you see the question of whether more Hispanics, with their signifcantly higher criminality and abject academic failings, are, per se, good for America.

Anonymous said...


In other words, the conventional wisdom about Hispanics and Republican politicians is wrong.


it isn't even conventional wisdom.

It is just media BS repeated a bazillion times till people get the idea that other people think that and so figure they must be right. This is the same way the media pushed gay marriage. No one in history ever thought of it before. There was never popular support for it. The public was never interested in it. Yet the media relentlessly report on it as though there were interest and sway the Hollywood fools to go with it and voila, major issue.

Hunsdon said...

Every time I hear of conventional wisdom I think of Kipling's poem, "The Gods of the Copybook Headings," since those copybook headings were once conventional wisdom. (That's how they became copybook headings, after all.)

Today's "conventional wisdom" is a tissue of manufactured lies that nobody believes, but everyone pretends to believe.

Anonymous said...

Well, on gay marriage I think Steve was right about 20 years ago gay men were contented just to live together and rarely are the sodomy laws enforce anymore unless you live in the deep South. They can get any job but the gay movement pushed it since they thought they wanted to be like everyone else have a marriage.

Anonymous said...

Well as stated the Republicans who want to bring in a lot of Mexicans or Central Americans for cheap labor may be suprise. The legal and illegal Mexicans and Central Americans have pushed as best as they can into labor Unions. The Hispanics are playing an old here that immirgants are more useful to Democratics something that today's Republicians don't get they are even trying to pushed in right to work states in the big cities in Texas like Houston to unionized janior work.

NOTA said...

I'd say the conventional wisdom is usually more or less right, but when it's wrong, it can be massively wrong and most people still won't notice. The conventional wisdom that says you should wash your hands after using the bathroom, or that European countries are usually better places to live than African ones, or that smoking and illegal drugs are pretty bad for you, are all correct.

The problem is, most people don't really subject the CW to any critical thinking. (And frankly, most people aren't much good at critical thinking and applying logic and statistics to what they're told.). So when BS becomes the conventional wisdom, it can stand up in contradiction to tons of evidence for years.

DYork said...

non-Hispanic whites???

Who comes up with these terms?

So we have:

Native American

African American

Asian American

Gay American

Hispanic American

Mexican American

And

"non hispanic whites"???

When can we start calling blacks "non Korean blacks" or calling Latinos (mestizos) "non East Indian latinos"

White Americans labeled this way is bizarre but even White "nationalists" or pro White American types uses it. It seems to be related to the game of pretending Latinos are racially White European so other White European people need to be distinguished from them .

You can see this game played out in the racial categorization of Latino criminals. In many states these obviously non White people are simply listed as WHITE.

It's insane. I've posted photos before from various state departments of prisons of people who look as black or Amer Indian as any known human being and they are listed as White.

DCThrowback said...

Almost as if Professor Hawley reads your blogs for ideas on empirical ideas that need more proof. Let's hope that leads him to be a tenured professor at UH. There are worse places to go for inspiration.

Anonymous said...

"Steve I would love to see historical research into the affects that the Eisenhower Administration's Project Wetback had on Hispanic assimilation, voting patterns and party identification.

I bet the response was a much higher desire to assimilate to American identity and values. That exact opposite of what the Open Borders advocates would have you believe." - Well it would stand to reason that kicking out the ones that aren't and don't want to be americans would leave only the ones that are or do want that.

Anonymous said...

This is true, the Mexicans in California and Texas probably voted more Republican or moderate Democratic in the 1980's than they do today. Today they see themselves as the victims of whites thru the radical groups. Enforcing is still important but I think the economically is changing where Rosie the robot could replace Maria in 10 years or Manuel the robot could replace Jose the farmworker. However, if this is true then of course low skilled service or labor work is reduce for the native born as well. Stats from the heavily Hispanic towns of California show higher unemplpyment than usually White or Asian towns. Santa Ana is 11 percent while Huntington Beach has an unemployment of 5.8 percent.

Reg Cæsar said...

Hawley at Houston, Sailer at Rice. What is it about that city that encourages people to think along these lines?

Another question: does AFF analysis work (albeit with lower numbers) with either immigrants or nonwhite natives? Or is it "a white thing; you wouldn't understand"? Stuff the [wrong kind of] white people like.

Hunsdon said...

DYork said: "non hispanic whites"???

Hunsdon replied: Better than "goyim."

Reg Cæsar said...

non-Hispanic whites??? Who comes up with these terms? --DYork

Like "petit apartheid" (aka Jim Crow) as a policy, "non-Hispanic white" as a term is simultaneously common sense and complete idiocy. This means that it is not the term or policy that is insane, but the reality underlying it. Which in these examples is basically the same: two or more very different people's sharing the same land.

If they can change your sheets every night, this is not segregation, but its opposite.

Anonymous said...

Jeb Bush leads the charge of the treason lobby.

Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick: Solving the Immigration Puzzle

Some want illegals to return to their native countries and 'wait in line' like everyone else. There is no line.


There is no "line." Critics of comprehensive reform often argue that illegal immigrants should return to their native countries and wait in line like everyone else who wants to come to America. But unless they have relatives in the U.S. or can fit within the limited number of work-based visas, no line exists for such individuals.

For most aspiring immigrants, the only means of legal admission to this country is an annual "diversity lottery" that randomly awards visas to 55,000 foreigners. There are roughly 250 applicants for each visa every year. The absence of a meaningful avenue of access increases the pressure for illegal immigration.

The U.S. needs workers of all types. The birthrate in this country has fallen below the level necessary to sustain the population at the very time that millions of Americans are leaving the workforce and expecting retirement benefits. The nation needs energetic young workers to spur the economy and support an ever-increasing social-welfare burden.

The only alternatives to increased immigration are mounting debts or reduced social services. A practicable system of work-based immigration for both high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants—a system that will include a path to citizenship—will help us meet workforce needs, prevent exportation of jobs to foreign countries and protect against the exploitation of workers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323482504578229660442099732.html

Corn said...

"Steve I would love to see historical research into the affects that the Eisenhower Administration's Project Wetback had on Hispanic assimilation, voting patterns and party identification.

I bet the response was a much higher desire to assimilate to American identity and values. That exact opposite of what the Open Borders advocates would have you believe."

I agree with this. In fact this did happen on a smaller scale a few years back. Back in 2005-06 when the GOP-led House voted for HR 4437, Mickey Kaus reported on his blog that LA County schoolteachers were telling him many new Hispanics students were being registered as Joe and Mary, rather than Jose and Maria.

Reg Cæsar said...

The autocorrection on the iPad slipped that apostrophe into "peoples" in my last post-- a mistake I haven't made since grade school.

More evidence that today's "élites" are often anything but.

And that's the point of Steve's post, and Prof. Hawley's research. So this isn't off-topic, is it?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, and the White House stop the deports, few were in La, most of the deports were in the Inland Empire in 2005-2006 if that's what your saying. La County Illegals with mainly a few violations have been protected since 1979.

Anonymous said...

Personality, the best are blue dog democratics on the immirgation issue there are some labeled blue dog that are not. They actually voted for e-verify around the late 1990's while the conservative Republcians led by Grover Norquist opposed e-verify.

Jim Bowery said...

Even if progressively more liberal attitudes on immigration gained a percent of minority vote for every percent lost of white vote, pursuing that course by Republicans would be catastrophically suicidal for the GOP, as the CNN racial bloc voting calculator can show if you plug in the numbers for the 2012 presidential election and modify them accordingly. If you go by the results of the Hawley study, it gets worse for the GOP to pursue its immigration liberalization strategy. Clearly, this goes beyond mere stupidity. Something else is going on with the GOP.