Positive Immigrant Ads Boost Support For Down-Ballot Democrats Over Border Security Messaging: Study

A new study has revealed that ads highlighting positive immigrant stories are more effective in convincing voters to support down-ballot Democrats than those focused on border security.

Progressive groups ASO Communications and Way To Win conducted the study with 5,197 adults, noting their reaction to a series of campaign ads on immigration and the southern border, The Hill reported.

These included the "Tougher" ad from Vice President Harris's campaign, which emphasized her border enforcement stance, and a control ad from former President Donald Trump's campaign making the opposite argument.

Participants in the study were also shown two ads from the Way To Win Action Fund. One ad, called "People Move," compared relocating a town or country to another. The other, "Love Makes a Family," connected the idea of taking care of a family with migration.

The study found that people who watched the "Tougher" ad, compared to the Trump one, were more likely to say they would vote for Harris. The effect was a bit weaker when "People Move" was compared to the Trump ad, and much weaker for "Love Makes a Family."

However, the two ads from Way To Win had a bigger impact than the Harris ad when it came to influencing voters' choices for House and Senate votes.

They also made people more likely to trust Democrats on immigration, believe that immigrants contribute positively to the U.S., and approve of Harris overall. The "People Move" ad, in particular, majorly increased people's likelihood of voting, according to the study.

Anat Shenker-Osorio, a messaging expert at ASO Communications, said, "What you want to say is, what the ads end up doing the trick of — and I'm pointing to 'People Move' here in particular — as an ad you want to lift up, like, why does immigration happen?" The Hill reported. "Why is this occurring, in terms that the average American who has not immigrated can understand? And so in the lexicon of the ad, it's freedom. It's 'people move.'"

Shenker-Osorio explained that these effects were part of a strategy aimed at countering fear-based messages that portray migration as a major threat.

The messaging expert added that the way to counter fearmongering involved understanding two key elements.

First, fear-based messaging raises the importance of a specific issue, like the border, making people think of it as the center of many problems. Second, it frames the opposition -- in this case, Democrats -- as responsible for making the situation worse. The message suggests that if Democrats remain in power, the issue will worsen for average voters, even those far from the border or near Canada.