23 NOVEMBER 2020

NEW REPORT: The Immigration Impact on Swing Voters

America’s Voice, Immigration Hub and NILC Immigrant Justice Fund Release New Report on How Immigration Moved Voters in Battleground States, Based on Multifaceted Campaigns

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today as President-elect Joe Biden announces his historic pick for DHS Secretary, America’s Voice, the Immigration Hub and NILC Immigrant Justice Fund released a new report detailing the activities and lessons learned from multifaceted, multimillion-dollar campaigns targeting swing voters with pro-immigrant messages. 

The report highlights the work of three pro-immigrant organizations in response to Trump’s unprecedented war on immigrants and refugees in the context of the 2020 campaign. The groups worked to understand how immigration moves swing and moderate voters and how best to influence those voters. 

Through the collective public opinion research, ad and race tracking, message development, and voter outreach, the organizations found three primary common themes: (1) Trump and Republican anti-immigrant attacks had increasingly become political liabilities, (2) the American electorate’s support, especially among swing voters, for pro-immigrant policies and opposition to Trump’s immigration approach continued to swell, and (3) an opportunity existed to go on offense on immigration, create a net negative for anti-immigrant candidates and move voters in favor of pro-immigrant candidates. 

An excerpt from the report highlights the major campaigns of each of the groups:

IMMIGRATION HUB: Building on their 2018 voter research and outreach, the Hub launched a multi-pronged program consisting of polling, innovative research, and digital outreach, to identify and reach over 2 million swing voters across Pennsylvania, Michigan and Colorado. By establishing a voter model, in collaboration with Civis Analytics, the Hub was able to identify nearly 6 million swing voters in the aforementioned three states and Wisconsin who moved away from President Trump and toward Democrats on vote choice when targeted with values-based immigration messaging. Three major battleground state polls, one Michigan poll on the presidential and Senate races, two post-election surveys of Michigan and Pennsylvania voters, and ad testing further demonstrated growing support for pro-immigration policies and candidates, including President-Elect Joe Biden. A randomized controlled test of voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania before and after being exposed to the Hub’s pro-immigrant content found an increase in swing voters reporting immigration reform as a top priority or an important issue for the next president to address, among other findings.

NILC IMMIGRANT JUSTICE FUND: Recognizing the need to build political power for immigrant families, the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund set out to make clear to candidates that they could win persuadable voters in battleground states by articulating an inclusive, pro-immigrant vision for America. NILC IJF used public opinion research to identify messages that could move persuadable voters to support candidates, including Joe Biden. Over 11.3 million video impressions were delivered to 130,000 persuadable voters as part of the organization’s digital ad campaign in Arizona, Wisconsin and North Carolina. In addition, volunteers used peer-to-peer texting to contact 99,811 persuadable voters in the same states.

AMERICA’S VOICE: As the long-time media outreach, media tracking and messaging arm of the immigrants’ rights movement, America’s Voice focused its polling strategies, digital advertising and media outreach on Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. AV also developed a website that comprehensively tracked advertising of federal and state candidate campaigns, party committees and SuperPACs that invoked immigration, xenophobia, racism in dog-whistle attack ads across the country. The work continues in Georgia, where both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats will be decided on Jan. 5, 2021, in two special election run-offs.

Read the full report HERE. For more information, please contact Beatriz Lopez at beatriz@theimmigrationhub.org. 

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The Immigration Hub is a national organization dedicated to advancing fair and just immigration policies through strategic leadership, innovative communications strategies, legislative advocacy and collaborative partnerships.