No Country for Asylum Seekers? How Short-Term Exposure to Refugees Influences Attitudes and Voting Behaviour in Hungary

How does exposure to refugees influence political behavior? We present evidence from Hungary, a country with widespread anti-immigration attitudes, that short term exposure during the 2015 refugee crisis predicts anti-refugee voting and sentiment. We code exposure to refugees at the settlement level using news reports from state media, an independent online news site, and an online social media aggregator. Settlements through which refugees traveled showed significantly higher anti-refugee voting in a national referendum on resettlement in 2016. The effect, estimated between 1.7 and 3.6%, decreases sharply with distance from points of exposure. As Hungary has right-wing anti-refugee parties in government and opposition, we are also able to explore the impact of the crisis on party support. Using a matched difference-in-differences model comparing vote shares across the 2014 and 2018 parliamentary elections, we find that the far-right opposition party Jobbik gained, while the governing right-wing Fidesz party lost votes in treated settlements. This suggests incumbent parties are punished by voters in these settlements skeptical of immigration regardless of their policy position. Survey data supports this finding of a competition among right-wing parties; We found that individuals in exposed settlements are more fearful of immigrants and support more restrictive policies, though only if they identify as right-wing partisans. We found no statistically significant difference between left-wingers in treated and untreated towns. Overall, Hungary provides an interesting case study of the effect of refugee crises, but our findings contribute to the broader ongoing discussion of how interactions with refugees shaped the political consequences of the European refugee crisis. Specifically, they add important insights into the nature of partisan political behavior in response to crisis.