Washington, DC — As Donald Trump and right-wing and Republican allies again spend millions on anti-immigrant ads and make the issue their signature point of emphasis on the campaign trail (and getting flagged by fact fact-checkers), an important new column from Marcela García asks the right question – “Are anti-immigrant ads effective?”
In her weekly newsletter and column for the Boston Globe, García explores the answer and extensively quotes from America’s Voice Senior Research Director Zachary Mueller and AV’s ongoing tracking of anti-immigrant messaging and advertising to see if 2024 promises to again follow past recent cycles in which the GOP’s extremism, including on immigration, ended up not delivering in the general election.
García’s full column is available online here and is excerpted below, following this quote from America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas:
“Trump and his Republican cronies are at it again, scapegoating immigrants to try to win political power. We have closely watched them run this same play over and over again now with predictable results. Their strategy of radicalization has failed to deliver in the last several election cycles and seems poised to do so again this year.
As Republicans tack to the ever-more extreme, they are leaving space for Democrats to connect with the broad majority of voters who, yes, want to ensure an orderly border, but also support a wider vision of a reformed immigration system that includes legal immigration pathways and citizenship for Dreamers and long-settled immigrants alongside reforms to ensure an orderly and secure border.”
Excerpts below from Marcela García column, “Are anti-immigrant ads effective?”:
“A team of reporters pored over more than 700 TV and digital ads that mentioned immigration and that ran in the first six months of the year for presidential and Senate races, congressional primaries, and major state contests. More than 90 percent of them were paid for by Republicans. The total price tag of all those ads? Nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. According to the Post, that figure is “$40 million more than ads that mention any other issue.”
Such an outsized collective expenditure naturally raises many questions, among them: How effective are those ads for Republicans? Surely the GOP wouldn’t be spending so much money if the party wasn’t getting a good return on its investment.
I asked Zachary Mueller, who has been tracking Republican negative immigration ads since 2018. Mueller, senior research director at America’s Voice, a pro-immigrant group, doesn’t think the massive investment has paid off.
… ‘Does it work for a particular subset of the Republican base? Yes, without a doubt,’ Mueller told me. He also said that the barrage of negative advertising might drive political donations. What we’re seeing, Mueller said, is a ‘nativist doom loop where Republicans who are competing in primaries are competing to see who the biggest nativist in the race is, trying to create a level of escalation in cycle after cycle and ad after ad and rallying their base up with these messages … Every year, Republicans keep running on immigration and have not been winning. Republicans have the narrowest majority in the House. We could also look at 2018, when there were historic wins for Democrats. [Focusing on immigration] has failed to actually win in battleground districts.”
… by and large, the story here, according to Mueller, “is less about an overall trend of all voters embracing anti-immigrant attitudes and more about a radicalization of the Republican Party.”
Relatedly, Daniel Dale of CNN issues a new fact check debunking a new Trump TV spot on immigration, noting: “A new television ad from former President Donald Trump’s campaign piles deception upon deception to attack Vice President Kamala Harris on immigration. The ad uses an edited quote to attack Harris over a supposed proposal that she hasn’t actually made.”
Additional Resources and Background
- Read the recent America’s Voice Substack analysis by Zachary Mueller, “The GOP has Spent $350 Million + on Nativist TV Ads, Will it Deliver at the Ballot Box?”
Follow Vanessa Cárdenas and America’s Voice on Twitter: @VCardenasDC and @Americ
