The Political Impact of Immigration: An increase in high-skilled immigrants decreases the share of Republican votes, while an inflow of low-skilled immigrants increases it

Mayda, Anna Maria, Giovanni Peri, and Walter Steingress. 2022. "The Political Impact of Immigration: Evidence from the United States." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 14 (1): 358-89. DOI: 10.1257/app.20190081

Abstract: This paper studies the impact of immigration to the United States on the vote share for the Republican Party using county-level data from 1990 to 2016. Our main contribution is to show that an increase in high-skilled immigrants decreases the share of Republican votes, while an inflow of low-skilled immigrants increases it. These effects are mainly due to the indirect impact on existing citizens' votes, and this is independent of the origin country and race of immigrants. We find that the political effect of immigration is heterogeneous across counties and depends on their skill level, public spending, and noneconomic characteristics.