Far from U.S.-Mexico border, immigration debate dominates many 2018 House races

n a recent congressional debate in Idaho, the first 11 questions for a pair of congressional candidates were about immigration. At another in Arkansas, the fate of undocumented immigrant kids dominated the discussion even though few of them reside in the state. And in Minnesota, a Democrat challenging an incumbent GOP House lawmaker went back and forth on the merits of building a wall on the U.S. southern border more than 1,600 miles away.With the midterm elections next, the topic of immigration is churning in House congressional races in places where the unemployment rate is low, the economy is robust and undocumented immigrants are few. Historically, these same indicators, when pointing in the opposite direction, trigger an anti-immigrant backlash. Not so in 2018.

President Donald Trump has been the driving force behind that hyperfocus on immigration, with his tweets and comments about the migrant caravan marching north and his plan to deploy more troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, and his attempts to follow through on his 2016 pledge to build a border wall. But there’s also a level of “cultural anxiety” at play, say political experts, as some Americans living far from the border continue to perceive a threat from immigrants, both legal and undocumented.

Americans list health care, the economy and gun policy as the three most important issues they’ll consider when casting their vote, with immigration coming in fourth, according to a nationwide poll conducted by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation. But self-identified Republicans cited immigration as their top concern.

Daron Shaw, a professor who studies campaigns and public opinion at the University of Texas at Austin, says those numbers can be explained by two factors.