Hate at first sight? Dynamic aspects of the electoral impact of migration: the case of Ukip

Abstract

In this paper, we test the hypothesis that the causal effect of immigrant presence on anti-immigrant votes is a short-run effect. For this purpose, we consider a distributed lag model and adapt the standard instrumental variable approach proposed by Altonji and Card (1991) to a dynamic framework. The evidence from our case study, votes for the UK Independent Party (Ukip) in recent European elections, supports our hypothesis. Furthermore, we find that this effect is robust to differences across areas in terms of population density and socioeconomic characteristics, and it is only partly explained by integration issues.