When Left Voters Turn Right: Immigration Crime Fears Push Cosmopolitans to Conservatives

🔎 What This Paper Asks:

This study investigates how public concern that immigration increases crime shapes electoral politics. Existing research credits an educational realignment for a growing left–right split on immigration. The argument here is different: leftist voters can be more conservative on immigrant crime than leftist parties, and that voter–party mismatch can drive highly educated progressives (so-called cosmopolitans) toward right-wing parties.

📊 Evidence from Multiple Sources:

• Survey data from 14 Western European countries are linked with expert ratings of party positions to identify mismatches between voter attitudes and party stances.
• A German panel survey tracks how concern about immigrant crime changes vote intention among Greens voters (the party associated with leftist cosmopolitans).
• A conjoint experiment with German voters tests causal effects and robustness of the defection mechanism.

🔬 Key Findings:

• A measurable voter–party mismatch exists: leftist voters often hold more conservative views on immigrant crime than their parties do.
• Panel evidence from Germany shows that rising concern about immigrant crime increases vote intention for the center-right among Green voters.
• The conjoint experiment replicates this defection effect and finds it persists even when the center-right stigmatizes immigrants or adopts conservative socio-cultural issue positions.

🌍 Why It Matters:

These results show that immigration-related crime concerns can pull highly educated, left-leaning cosmopolitans to the right, complicating the story of simple educational realignment. The findings have implications for party strategy, coalition-building, and understanding cross-cutting cleavages in Western European electorates.