Public Responses to the Asylum Crisis in Norway

In the fall of 2015 Europe experienced the arrival of an unprecedented number of refugees. This paper examines the public response in Norway to this “exogenous shock.” Previous research and theories give complicated predictions about the public opinion dynamics to be expected in the wake of such shocks. Some emphasize the role of party cues, others focus on ideological priors, and yet others predict changes mainly among non-informed or low-interest citizens. A major challenge in this line of analysis is lack of good panel data. This paper uses data from a randomly recruited online panel (the Norwegian Citizen Panel) collected before, during, and after the crisis. We analyze the public response to the crisis along three dimensions: (1) Support for immigration and refugee rights, (2) Salience of the immigration issue, and (3) support for the anti-immigrant radical right (Fremskrittspartiet). Comparing the data collected before and during the crisis, we document a significant change in restrictive direction on all three dimensions. We then turn to examining the extent and durability of these changes. Before the ECPR conference, we will have analyzed the durability of the shift at two post-crisis time-points (fall 2016 and spring 2017). It is too early to conclude about the durability-findings at the time of writing.