Immigration Not a Deciding Issue in 2007 Elections-- but Economic Concerns Do Loom Large

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Joel Barkin
Executive Director
Progressive States Network

In 2006, many analysts raised fears that anti-immigrant fervor would doom progressive candidates. Instead, progressives won big in those elections. Immigration was a non-issue for many voters and fueled a backlash last year AGAINST conservative candidates by many Latino voters who had supported President Bush in 2000.

In 2007, it was more of the same in elections in Virginia and New York where Democrats gained control of the Virginia Senate and expanded control in Long Island's Suffolk County. Typical headlines read "In the Ballot Booths, No Fixation on Immigration" (Washington Post) and "New York Democrats Say License Issue Had Little Effect" (NY Times). One senior political strategist in Virginia said, "The one point on which moderates and conservatives seem to agree is that their party overplayed the illegal immigration issue. They went for a magic bullet with immigration, and it didn't work". Adding to that point, Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, who will likely become majority leader in the Virginia Senate, said in an interview:

"The results are proving that, while immigration is a concern to people -- and it should be -- it is not returning the votes that [anti-immigrant leaders] thought that it would."

Despite local agitation over immigration in both states, elections turned on a range of other issues, from taxes to land use policies. Hard-line anti-immigrant candidates generally lost out to candidates who argued more broadly for progressive policies to address the needs of the public.

Immigration As A Proxy In A Vacuum

Public opinion data has lately diverged on the question of just how important an issue immigration really is to the American public. In 2006, the Associated Press claimed that "immigration is a growing concern" among voters. Yet, at the very same time, polls from CBS and NBC News showed that immigration was, in fact, among the lowest concerns cited by voters. Gallup reports that "despite the media attention it has received, immigration usually ranks low when Americans are asked to rate the importance of various issues."

The divergence has at least partially to do with each survey's methodology. Voters are more likely to say they believe immigration is a top issue of concern when they are prompted in a vacuum than when they are asked an open-ended question about their priorities. However, that dynamic is not insignificant. It suggests that in individual races, voters can be prompted to cast their vote on the immigration issue – if progressives allow a vacuum on other issues like jobs, the economy, health care and trade to exist.