The Acquisition of Partisanship by Latinos and Asian Americans

Predictors of Political Orientation among US-born Mexican Americans: Cultural Identification, Acculturation Attitudes, and Socioeconomic Status

“…Cuban Americans, on the other hand, have a long history of supporting the Republican Party who has shown greater opposition to Fidel Castro's communist policies in Cuba than the Democratic Party (Uhlaner & Garcia, 2005). Several studies have examined predictors of political orientation within the Latino subgroups (Cain, Kiewiet, & Uhlaner, 1991;Coffin, 2003;Dutwin, Brodie, Herrmann, & Levin, 2005;Uhlaner & Garcia, 2005): Latinos who identify with the Democratic Party typically are of Mexican or Puerto Rican origins, earn less income, hold less traditional values, and are more likely to identify themselves Latino identity in favor of adopting a more conservative or Republican identity.…”

Emigrants and the Body Politic Left Behind: Results from the Latino National Survey

“…Linking aggregate data on home country political conditions to individual level data collected in the host society, a number of scholars have shown that premigration political conditions yield later effects. Thus, McAllister and Makkai (1992) demonstrated that Australian immigrants from countries with a shorter history of democracy are more likely to have authoritarian attitudes than those coming from countries with more 4 established democratic traditions; Cain et al (1991) found that characteristics of the polity of origin affected partisan loyalties in the polity of destination, with U.S. voters born in Russia, Cuba, Vietnam (all then communist countries), and Korea (threatened by a communist country) more likely to be Republicans; Simpson Bueker (2005) showed that immigrants coming from non-democratic regimes are less likely to turn out to vote than those from democratic societies; Bilodeau, McAllister and Kanji (2010) showed that immigrants from authoritarian regimes are as supportive of democracy as the rest of the population, but are more likely to support alternative, non-democratic forms of government, with the more authoritarian the country of origin, the greater the acceptance of authoritarian government. Though highly suggestive, these studies rest on inferences regarding the impact of prevailing, macro-level, pre-migration political conditions on post-migration political attitudes and behavior: they lack direct information on migrants' political views and behavior prior to leaving home.…”

Partisanship by Invitation: Immigrants Respond to Political Campaigns

“…The general consensus among scholars is that partisanship is relatively shallow within this population (Abrajano 2010;Abrajano and Alvarez 2010;Cain, Kiewiet, and Uhlaner 1991;Fraga et al 2011;Hajnal and Lee 2011;Jones-Correa 1998;Junn et al 2011;Lien, Conway, and Wong 2004;Nguyen and Garand 2009;Pantoja 2013;Schildkraut 2013;Wong 2006). As Schildkraut (2013, 29-30) writes, the incidence of party identification among immigrants today "is low, which is attributed to a variety of factors, including the lack of information about American partisan politics, the lack of outreach by parties, and that issues of central concern to immigrants might not align with the nation's current left/right divide.…”

“…Prior research shows that the longer an immigrant has resided in the country, the higher the probability of identifying with a party. Those who possess more socioeconomic resources are more apt to be partisans, as are immigrants who have become naturalized citizens or are more interested in American politics (Cain et al 1991;Hajnal and Lee 2011;Wong 2000;Wong et al 2011). This previous work points to the possibility that immigrants who possess fewer resources, are less motivated to follow public affairs, or have resided in the United States for less time are especially moved by campaign invitations; the better resourced, the more highly engaged, and the more experienced may possess more stable partisan orientations.…”