"And Some, I Assume, Are Good People”: Determinants of Elites’ Strategic Discourse About Immigrants

The views expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University or the views of Utah State University. [...] Examining Europe over the 21st century, Dennison, and Kriesi (2023) show that unemployment, the environment, and immigration have shaped the discourse and the electoral outcomes of parties of all ideological families. [...] 14 Third, to check whether the closure of US borders due to the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the results,we check the consistency of the results before and after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention invoked Title 42 in March 2020 under the Trump administration, requiring “the expulsion of unauthorized single adults and family units arriving at the land borders in order to protect against. [...] We run salience models controlling for the percentage of the population at the congressional district level with a college degree or higher and the percentage of the population identifying as Black, ob- tained from the 2019 American Community Survey. [...] Furthermore, the collective shift from the primary to the general election confirms the relevance of unity for the party.