14 JUL 2022

Data to Disrupt: What makes a NV voter disqualify a GOP candidate and the dangerous mainstreaming of the “invasion” message

1. Battleground spotlight: Disqualifying Nevada’s Republican candidates

The Washington Post’s David Byler pointed out on Monday that Latinos in Nevada are a vital voting bloc to win statewide seats — and are Democrats’ “biggest vulnerability.” But, as we found in Nevada, immigration can be a game-changer.

The GOP’s top candidates in Nevada for Governor and Senate — Sheriff Joe Lombardo and Adam Laxalt — are both supporting the most unpopular position on immigration: end DACA, deport Dreamers.

“Our messaging data shows that their anti-DACA and overall anti-immigrant stances are disqualifying for the majority of Nevada voters, specifically independents, undecideds and Latino voters,” said Melissa Morales, head of Somos PAC, which has been actively campaigning in Nevada to galvanize voters against the Republican candidates. “In fact, for the majority of voters who don’t know enough about Laxalt, they found his anti-DACA position to be of most concern and ultimately moving against voting for him.”

Bottom line: “You better believe, immigration is oftentimes the main disqualifier of a Republican candidate in people’s mind.”

So raise the alarm and factor in this: The possibility of ending DACA is even closer than we think. The conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is poised to end the program. The stakes couldn’t be higher should an extreme GOP majority take over and undermine a legislative fix to protect Dreamers.

Proof points to hold Nevada contenders accountable:

  • Lombardo has made deportations a centerpiece of his primary campaign, running ads touting that he “deported thousands” while an allied superPAC ran TV ads praising him for allegedly deporting “over 10,000 people.”

  • Adam Laxlat has campaigned by attacking Dreamers, and runs up and down the border screaming “invasion”, “open borders,” “mass amnesty,” and versions of ”replacement” theory.

  • NV-04 GOP candidate Sam Peters, who made the deadly “invasion” rhetoric a centerpiece of his campaign, ran ads touting endorsements from white nationalist Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and disgraced former sheriff Joe Arpaio.

2. Ad Tests: Holding GOP candidates accountable on immigration sinks their numbers with key voters

What does the GOP-endorsed rhetoric of an “invasion” at the border have to do with the dark internet, January 6th and mass shootings? Let’s connect the dots:

  • The dark and dangerous rabbit hole: Nontraditional digital platforms, like 4chan and Discord, have long offered a rabbit hole for right-wing fringe thinkers, white supremacists and young isolated men to find a dysfunctional home. As NYU Professor Scott Galloway put it, these men are “more susceptible to fringe theories and they over-index on online forums filled with conspiracy theories, misogynistic content and misinformation.”

  • Compounded with a frightening fact: According to The Violence Project, men are responsible for 98% of mass shootings and more than two thirds are under the age of 35.

  • Out of the dark internet into the mainstream is the “Great Replacement Theory”. As we’ve told you before, this racist ideology has been transformed into a GOP midterm message. America’s Voice ad tracking project has identified over 120 GOP ads from this election cycle employing the false migrant “invasion” and “replacement” conspiracies.

  • Abbott strikes back: Last week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott made his “invasion” executive order, forcing local law enforcement and the National Guard in the state to deport any “migrant” they pull over back to the border. The order isn’t ordinary (or even constitutional). It aims to normalize the conspiracy that has inspired multiple domestic terrorist attacks across the country, including in El Paso, while putting targets on the backs of Texas’s multiracial majority.

Dive deeper: Read Washington Post’s Greg Sargent’s interview with an expert in political violence who urgently warns that the worst is coming, and USA Today’s latest from Candy Woodall who takes account of how the GOP is pushing dangerous language into the mainstream, featuring America’s Voice’s 2,700+ tracking of Republican ads that amplify some of the worst xenophobic tropes.

The callous consequences:

  1. Another mass shooting: The Highland Park shooter on July 4th was deeply enmeshed in far right conspiracy theories that spread on platforms like 4chan and Discord; friends say he “lived his entire life online.” Though there are photos of him attending a Trump rally, the gunman's relationship to politics was more of a “pathway of radicalization” that led him to seeking out information about mass shootings and creating videos with violent imagery.

  2. Extremism unlocked in January 6th hearings: The Select Committee has shown the role of GOP rhetoric in spurring on political violence in the Capital. And Republicans are fully aware or willfully ignorant of their role as a text exchange from the hearing revealed. As former senior adviser to Trump, Brad Parscale put it, this rhetoric “killed someone”.

3. How is the GOP defending itself post-Roe? By talking about the border

While most Americans have spent the past few weeks appalled by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and stunned by explosive testimony before the Jan. 6 committee, Republican politicians were only talking about their favorite issues — inflation, crime, and, especially, the border.

In the two weeks following the overturn of Roe, GOP politicos tweeted about the border more than three times as much as about one of the most disruptive and devastating Supreme Court decisions of all time. And they mentioned migrants nearly twice as often as they did the Jan. 6 committee.

They know that talking abortion and the Jan. 6 riots are losing bets for them, so they’re going to the border and immigration.

4. Right-wing media revives its “migrant caravan” plotline

In the month of June, there were:

  • 4,514 negative mentions of immigration in right-wing media,

  • More than 180,000 negative references to immigration on all of Twitter

  • 2,405 mentions from GOP Twitter accounts.

The media mentions were driven by reports from Fox News about a migrant caravan of up to 15,000 people approaching the U.S.-Mexico border and a NewsMax article highlighting that Arizona and Texas have sent 79 buses to Washington D.C. with over 2,500 migrants.

The primary source for right-wing mentions occurred on June 28th after the heartbreaking news that over 50 migrants were found dead in an overheated tractor-trailer in San Antonio. Instead of expressing condolences, many right-wing figures used this moment to politicize the border further. Republicans, such as Governor Greg Abbott, wasted no time blaming the tragedy on President Biden's "open borders" policies. Rep. Andy Biggs also tweeted that Biden's "open border" was what "helped facilitate human trafficking."

Reality check: Migration to the border has increased since President Reagan, and restrictive immigration policies like Title 42 and a lack of legal immigration pathways forces migrants to take life-threatening journeys to escape either persecution, violence, communism or the effects of natural disasters.

Got a question or request for any messaging research? Email us at info@datatodisrupt.org.

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