Effects of Immigrant Entrepreneurship on Party Voting Decisions in the United States

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of immigrant entrepreneurship on votes for the more immigrant-restrictive party in America, the Republican Party. Since immigrant entrepreneurs contribute to the economy and act as job creators, I hypothesize that citizens observe this pattern and alter their sentiment toward immigrants in a more positive manner, leading to a decline in votes for the Republican Party. I run a fixed effects OLS model on the county and state level, altering model specifications by changing the control variables and adding a time lag. A two-stage least square regression is run as a robustness check. I find that there is a robust negative association between the amount of immigrant entrepreneurship and votes for the Republican Party. These results imply an emerging trend of positive immigrant sentiment as entrepreneurial immigration continues to rise.