2022 GOP Electoral Messaging and Ad Spending on Immigration Provides A Roadmap to the GOP’s 2024 Playbook

In response to President Biden’s reelection campaign announcement, the national Republican Party deployed a video that spotlighted the issues their party would use to attack Biden, Vice President Harris and Democrats at large: the economy, crime, and immigration. To no one’s surprise, these are recycled themes from the 2022 cycle and previous presidential cycles. Immigration, in particular, has long become the weapon of choice for Republicans since candidate Donald Trump popularized “build the wall,” “bad hombres” and other divisive messaging on the issue. Now and throughout 2024, immigration will continue to be weaponized.

Last year’s cycle provides a glimpse of what voters can expect in 2024, with exaggerated budgets and even higher stakes. In 2022, the Republican Party and its candidates embraced extremism and doubled-down on anti-immigrant messaging rhetoric. On broadcast TV alone, GOP candidates and right-wing groups spent over $171 million in ads, attacking Democrats on immigration, across ten battleground states– on top of millions more spent on digital ads and other paid communication to voters (i.e. mailers, billboards, and emails). The GOP strategy on immigration was further amplified by right-wing media, which in the same cycle generated over 61,000 mentions of the “border” to an estimated audience of 59 million, according to an Immigration Hub report. In fact, Fox News dedicated about 32% of its coverage to the border and immigration across all platforms in the same year.

While the GOP saw major losses in 2022 despite enormous spending on anti-immigrant advertising, they have been successful in monopolizing the immigration conversation. In a 2023 battleground states survey conducted by Global Strategy Group, voters reported they hear more from Republicans than Democrats on immigration by a 52%-27% margin, which contributes to Republicans’ 8-point advantage on who voters trust more to handle the issue. As the GOP dominates the conversation on immigration, the impact on voters’ view on President Biden is not lost – the survey found that a majority of voters believe the president is ignoring the issue. This distorted view, given that the Biden administration has undertaken over 400 immigration-related executive actions, is in large part due to a lack of political advertising and socialization of immigration solutions and counter-offense against the GOP. Allowing Republican attacks to go unanswered deepens voter misunderstanding of the Democratic position on the issue, flattens base enthusiasm, and moves a set of moderates vulnerable to GOP messaging and misinformation.

With President Biden’s reelection bid launched, it is critical to look back at the GOP strategy on immigration as a means to understand their 2024 playbook and how the Biden-Harris campaign and Democratic Party can go on offense to deliver a winning message on immigration to key battleground voters.