The Sway of Migrant Crisis and COVID-19 Pandemic on Voter Preference

Protectionism is often depicted as an instinctive response to global challenges. This article examined the sway of recent large-scale threats on Canadian voters, particularly their support for policies and candidates advocating isolationist positions. Study 1 randomly primed 593 Canadians with either neutral social media messages or messages about the migrant crisis. Participants reported their preexisting political ideologies, processed the messages, and rated their risk perceptions and political choices. Between-subject t tests and two-way analyses of variance found that threat exposure did not signficantly change participants' endorsement of right-leaning policies or conservative candidates. To diagnose the imperviousness of political endorsement, structural equation models showed that preexisting political ideology supplanted risk perception as a determinant of voter choice. Study 2 replicated the diagnosis under a new threat landscape by randomly exposing 577 Canadian participants to social media messages on the topics of COVID-19 or COVID-19 vaccination. Moderated mediation analyses found the aforementioned diagnosis generalizable across the two threat types, with the exception of a small partial mediation. Fears and anxieties have been used as justifications for protectionist policies and the insecurity narrative stands to sugarcoat ideologically based political choices as if they were threat responses.