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Who Supports Syrians? The Relative Importance of Religion, Partisanship, and Partisan News

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2018

Brian Newman
Brian Newman*
Affiliation:
Pepperdine University
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Abstract

Who supports allowing Syrian refugees into the United States? As a candidate, Donald Trump clearly opposed doing so. In contrast, religious leaders across the broad spectrum of religious traditions in the United States have drawn on sacred texts to call their people to action in response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Many explicitly ask the government to resettle Syrian refugees in the United States. Thus, many Republicans may have experienced cross-cutting pressures. Analyses of three surveys from 2015 and 2016 found that party identification, ideology, support for Trump, partisan-news consumption, religious-service attendance, age, and education predicted support for bringing Syrian refugees to the United States. Overall, the partisan and ideological variables were far more predictive of attitudes than religious variables. These results raise important questions about refugee politics and contexts in which religious forces conflict with partisan and ideological forces.

Type
Articles
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 775 - 781
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2018 

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