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1. The GOP 2022 strategy: Immigration on repeat.

(Source: Arizona Senate Candidate Jim Lamon ad, 1/20/22)

Across the country, Republicans are already focusing heavily on anti-immigrant messaging in their 2022 campaigns. The reason: the issue is salient with primary voters, and the attacks often go unanswered.

It’s been their plan all along, as Republican strategist Jeff Roe and Stephen Miller pointed out: “As an issue, I can’t think of one that’s better.” In fact, according to POLITICO’s recent tracking, “Immigration is by far the most popular topic in Republican campaign ads.”

The ad blitz is in full swing:

America’s Voice GOP Ad Tracker is keeping tabs of the right’s advertising on immigration. In the first three months of this year, Republicans have created more than 500 unique pieces of paid political content pushing anti-immigrant messages.

The tracker found that GOP candidates are driving three major messaging themes:

• “Invasion” at the southern border. Most in the GOP are attempting to paint a picture of chaos at the border. In fact, every Republican gubernatorial candidate in Arizona has employed the “invasion” messaging.

• Fentanyl and overdoses. J.D. Vance’s Protect Ohio Values PAC (OH, Sen.), Jim Lamon (AZ, Sen.), and Greg Abbott (TX, Gov.) are just some of the GOP candidates trying to scare voters about an opioid epidemic that starts at the border and spreads to their neighborhood.

• Democrats incentivize migrants with benefits. They falsely claim that Democrats are using amnesty, voting rights, massive payouts, plane tickets and more to attract migrants to the border.

Immigration won’t be the only issue that Republican candidates focus on, but it will be a cornerstone of the GOP’s overall midterm strategy. With news of Title 42’s end, Republicans admitted in two new memos they will pile on their border attacks. Democrats must face this head on.

2. NEW: The fundamentals: How Democrats should respond

A new memo captures the fundamentals from The Ultimate Messaging Guide to Winning the Immigration Narrative, a massive collection, review, and synthesis of public opinion research on a range of immigration issues, from 2016 to present. Recapping a wealth of proven and powerful approaches to immigration messaging, the memo provides Democrats and political strategists with effective methods to inform and persuade voters.

• Define the GOP. Make sure that you clearly name the motivations of your opponent — and how they are different and not shared by your audience.

• Disrupt the right-wing narrative against immigrants and the immigration system. Lead with values and keep it local.

• Talk solutions. Connect the dots between harm and hope, and frame the debate with a proactive vision.

According to the memo, two ads (1 | 2) tested by the Immigration Hub, where both the Republican is defined and immigration solutions are socialized, found that these messages were effective in driving up Democratic approval and pro-immigrant sentiment among swing voters in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

3. Voters want to hear about immigration … from Democrats

Since President Biden took office, top Democratic pollsters have found a gradual decline in the American electorate’s confidence in Democrats’ handling of immigration. Even more alarming is that most battleground voters don’t know what Biden and Democrats have done on the issue, despite scores of administrative and legislative actions taken to roll back some of the cruelest policies of the past and improve the system.

So what are they hearing instead? “Biden’s open borders.”

The solution: Democrats can’t run or go GOP-lite. It’s time to talk immigration.

In a NILC Immigrant Justice Fund poll, 71% of Americans said immigration should be a “very” or “extremely” important priority for the White House and Congress. The poll also found that a majority of Americans supported rolling back Trump-era immigration policies.

A strategy memo from Way to Win advises Democrats to “go on offense” with a strong message on a number of top issues, including immigration, that:

• Takes the Democrats’ side in the argument — defending our values and ideas rather than running from them.

• Inoculates against the GOP attacks by calling them out for their obstruction, extremism, and racial division — and explaining why they are doing all of it.

• Makes the voter the hero of the story and leans into the power of cross-racial solidarity to do big things.

4. Right-wing media can’t stop talking about immigrants

So far this year, conservative media outlets have mentioned their favorite immigration lies — like the “Harris Border crisis” and the “immigrant invasion” — more than 23,000 times.

• On television, Fox News and OANN duked it out for the worst offender. Fox News mentioned immigration 5,086 times, while OANN came in second with 3,084. Online, Breitbart had the most to say about immigration, with 1,993 mentions so far this year.

These talking points manage to penetrate mainstream media and the general online discourse. Take the Washington Post Editorial Board, for example, which last Friday used the terms “a tsunami of undocumented migrants” as it criticized the Biden administration over its termination of Title 42. Guess who else has used this dog whistle? Former President Donald Trump.

We estimate that more than 59 million people have been reached with this messaging, across television, radio, online, print and podcasts.

• Fox News’s primetime shows — like Tucker Carlson Tonight and Hannity — each pull in more than 3 million viewers a night, with millions more reading the Fox News website every day.

• And the right’s most popular podcasters, like Ben Shapiro, are reaching tens of millions more every month.

Using the same filters that we use for tracking conservative media — looking for phrases like “Illegal immigrants” and “Mexican drug cartels” — to search the English-speaking world on Twitter, we estimate that, so far this year, there were …

• More than 200,000 negative references to immigration

• Nearly 150,000 mentions of the “border crisis”

• At least 36,000 messages linking immigrants to drugs

• Almost 12,000 tweets that discussed immigrants voting

How to counter: Expose and hold right-wing media and misinformers accountable. Don’t repeat their talking points. Instead, socialize content and messaging from a place of abundance, not deficit. Inform your audience or rebut your opponent with immigration solutions and values-based messaging. And keep it on repeat.

Got a question or request for any messaging research? Email us at info@datatodisrupt.org.

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