Party Communication and Public Opinion on Asylum in Sweden

Abstract

This study analyzes the influence of party communication on Swedish voters’ opinion on asylum, in a time when Swedish parties increasingly communicate on the migration issue, and heavily shift their positions. Combining data on voters drawn from the 2014–2018 panel of the Swedish National Election Studies (SNES) with a large corpus of party press releases collected to measure party communication, this paper analyzes how Swedish voters’ positions on asylum have changed between the last and the current election. We find a partisan cueing effect, whereby voters take cues from their preferred party. The study of partisan cueing effects and parties’ role in the polarization of public opinion has important implications for the study of mass-elite linkages, as well as for future party strategies towards the migration issue.