Divided island: Haitian immigration and electoral outcomes in the Dominican Republic

This paper provides new evidence on the effect of immigration on electoral outcomes in developing countries and emerging democracies. The Dominican Republic (DR) is used as case study as it provides a highly interesting context to analyse this issue. The majority of its immigrants come from neighbouring Haiti, and together the two countries share the island of Hispaniola. The analysis relies on a novel municipality panel dataset and an instrumental variable strategy to address the endogeneity of the location decisions of immigrants. I find robust evidence that higher immigrant concentration causes greater support for the right-wing political coalition that has traditionally been more opposed to immigration. At the same time, the popularity of the centre coalition is found to decline in localities characterised by a larger exposure to foreigners. Empirical evidence from election outcomes and opinion survey data suggests that citizenship, political competition and cultural identity considerations might be shaping individual attitudes towards immigrants in the DR