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Stop Invasion! The Electoral Tipping Point In Anti-Immigrant Voting

Info IEB Number 32. December 2019

Why do anti-immigrant political parties have more success in areas that host fewer immigrants? Recent evidence from around the world suggests that often anti-immigrant political parties receive most of their electoral support from areas where low shares of immigrants live. For example, in the 2017 French Presidential elections,
Emmanuel Macron received more electoral support in big cities, while Marine Le Pen, who pledged to stop immigration, scored better in the countryside, where normally fewer immigrants live. A similar evidence can be found in the rural areas of other countries (e.g. the success of Donald Trump in the U.S., the Brexit campaign in the UK, Vox in Spain), and it has been highlighted by the recent academic literature (e.g. the article by Dustamann et al., 2019, on the electoral consequences of refugee reception in Denmark).