Democracy and “the Other”: Anti-Immigrant Attitudes and White Support for Anti-Democratic Norms

Abstract

We argue that in a racially and ethnically diverse society such as the U.S., public support for anti-democratic norms among the white majority may be driven, in part by threat related to immigrants. Following racial priming theory, we suggest that for members of the white majority who harbor strong negative priors about immigrants, immigrant-origin groups’ demands for democratic inclusion may be perceived in zero-sum terms. We further argue that threat to the white cultural primacy by outgroups may drive anti-immigrant whites to support anti-democratic norms that may better protect the elevated social status of whites over democratic norms that extend equality and cultural representation to racialized immigrant groups. We test this theory via two original threat priming experiments and an LDV analysis using 2017-2018 panel data from the VSG. Our findings suggest that when threat from immigrants is salient, it causes declining support for democratic norms among anti-immigrant whites. The LDV models also show that anti-immigrant attitudes are a strong and positive predictor of support for anti-democratic norms even accounting for the lagged DV.

Keywords: anti-immigrant attitudes, democratic norms, public opinion