When Gaps Become Huuuuge: Donald Trump and Beliefs About Immigration

Abstract

Immigration became a hot issue during the 2016 presidential election, in part due to Donald Trump’s offensive campaign against immigrants and minorities in general. Drawing upon the belief gap hypothesis, we tested if support for Donald Trump increased false beliefs about immigrants. The belief gap hypothesis explains differences in beliefs about empirically verifiable and politically contested issues, relying on ideology and partisanship—instead of education— to predict people’s beliefs. By using nationally representative panel data, this study explored how political ideology and education work together to predict belief gaps about immigrants. Findings suggest that conservative ideology and education interact to predict attitudes, showing that highly educated conservatives hold more negative beliefs about immigrants as compared to highly educated liberals or less educated conservatives. We also found that Trump’s supporters exhibit negative attitudes and beliefs about immigration—yet results indicate that Donald Trump is not the cause of such attitudes but the catalyst that reveals them. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.