The Evolution of Partisanship Among Immigrants

Abstract

This paper examines evidence on the partisanship of immigrants and second generation citizens as a first step in assessing the impact of recent compositional changes in the electorate. Drawing upon a sample of 574 Latino- and 308 Asian-Americans, we find that the longer Latino immigrants have been in the United States, the more likely they are to identify as Democrats and the more intensely they hold their partisan attachments. Asian immigrants, in contrast, exhibited no such trends in the direction of their party choice or in their partisan identity. We also find strong age-related gains in Democratic support and in partisan intensity among subsequent generations of Latinos. We strongly suspect that these too are experience-related, but we are not able to discount equally plausible cohort-based scenarios.