Replication Data for: Beyond Changing Minds: Raising the Issue Importance of Expanding Legal Immigration

How can public opinion change in a pro-immigration direction? Recent studies suggest that those who support immigration care less about it than those who oppose it, which may explain why lawmakers don’t enact pro-immigration reforms even when voters are pro-immigration. To see if personal issue importance of immigration can be changed, I conducted a probability-based, nationally representative US survey experiment (N=3450) exposing respondents to verifiable arguments about the broad national benefits of expanding legal immigration and the costs of not doing so. Using new measures of issue importance, my descriptive results show only one-fifth of voters prioritizing the issue have a pro-immigration preference. Furthermore, while anti-immigration respondents prioritize policies regarding law enforcement and (reducing) future immigrants, pro-immigration respondents prioritize (helping) immigrants already here. The experimental results confirmed the provided arguments raised immigration’s importance among pro-immigration voters but didn’t backfire by mobilizing anti-immigration voters. Contrary to expectations, arguments increased pro-immigration policy preferences, but did not change voters’ subissue priorities within immigration or willingness to sign a petition. Overall, the treatment was effective beyond changing minds by shifting stated issue positions and priorities in a pro-immigration direction. It can thus be used in a non-targeted information campaign to promote pro-immigration reforms.