Immigration Rates & Voter Turnout

Immigration Rates & Voter Turnout

CASB 108 - History, Politics, and Sociology

The current study was designed to answer the question of whether or not immigration rates effect voter turnout in individual states. Attitudes on immigration have been studied for many years and it has shown that they do influence voter turnout. However, there have been very few studies on how immigration rates per state effect voter turnout.

Using states as the unit of analysis, a multiple regression was run to examine the relationship between the rate of immigrants in a state and the voter turnout for the 2020 Presidential Election. The immigrants in this study will be specifically foreign-born Latinos (South and Central American and the Caribbean). Other things influence voter turnout such as; income and education.

I do expect to find that immigration rates, despite people’s income and education do cause voter turnout to increase. The findings from this research will possibly inform immigration policy and shed light on the relationship between immigration policy and voter turnout.

Keywords: foreign-born, immigrants, voter turnout