The Immigration Divide in our Minds: Evidence on Cleavage (Mis-)Perceptions in Germany

The past few decades have seen the emergence of a new political cleavage between winners and losers of globalisation and an increasing polarization between those groups. While much scholarly efforts have been placed in studying the nature and structure of this political divide, we still do not well understand how citizens themselves perceive the political conflict in society. How accurate are citizens’ perceptions of public opinion and societal polarization along cleavage-lines? To shed light on this question, we focus on the issue of immigration that is in the center of the new socio-cultural conflict around globalization. This study conceptualizes and measures cleavage perceptions of immigration attitudes in a population survey in Germany to provide evidence of their nature and accuracy. We show that citizens perceive public opinion on immigration to be more restrictive than it is in reality and that they tend to overestimate the level of polarization on this issue. Furthermore, misperceptions are systematically stronger regarding the losers of globalisation compared to the winners of globalisation. The findings demonstrate the importance of citizens’ perceptions for our understanding of politics in times of a deepening globalisation divide.