A Rising Tide? The Salience of Immigration and the Rise of Anti-Immigration Political Parties in Western Europe JAMES DENNISON AND ANDREW GEDDES Abstract In this article, we consider the causes of the increase in voting for anti-immigration parties in western Europe in the past decade. We first note that one of the most commonly assumed reasons for this increase is an associated increase in anti-immigration sentiment, which we show is likely to be false. We also outline the major theoretical explanations, which we argue are likely to be incomplete. We then introduce our proposed explanation: these parties have benefitted from a sharp increase in the salience of immigration amongst some voters. We show that there are strong correlations over time between the salience of immigration and the polling of such parties in most western European countries. We argue that aspects of immigration in the last decade have activated pre-existing opposition to immigration amongst a shrinking segment of the populations of western European states. Keywords: immigration, radical right, populism, issue salience Introduction AS OFTEN happens in this contemporary era when the academic quest for and anxiety about ‘impact’ and ‘societal relevance’ accompany any programme of research, the authors of this article were both happy and intrigued to receive an invitation to present their work on European attitudes to migra- tion at a meeting of senior EU officials. Dis- cretion necessarily prevents us recounting all the details, but the way in which the meet- ing was subsequently described to us was quite striking. There is, we were informed in the briefing note prepared for the meeting, a rising tide of anti-immigration sentiment sweeping across the EU. This, apparently, has resulted from negative media coverage of immigration and migrants. What is more, this rising tide of anti-immigration senti- ment, driven by a hostile media coverage, was driving voters into the hands of anti- immigration populists and the radical right. The briefing note contained two quite big, assumed causal mechanisms that we suggest —and previous research shows—are ques- tionable and reflective of a misunderstanding of the structure, characteristics and effects of attitudes to migration in Europe. As we show in this article, there is little evidence that there is a rising tide of anti-immigration sentiment sweeping across Europe. Rather, while there are important forms of varia- tion, such as those between countries, atti- tudes to migration are remarkably stable and have actually become gradually more posi- tive to immigration from outside and within the EU over the last decade. Moreover, strik- ingly and perhaps counterintuitively, positiv- ity actually increased during and since the ‘migration crisis’ of 2015. What matters more to voting, as we show, is the high salience of the immigration issue around 2015 and the effects of this salience on political behaviour. Moving to the second proposition, while we would not dispute the relevance of negative media coverage of migration, particularly of migrants and asylum-seekers crossing to Europe via Mediterranean routes (a small minority of those arriving in Europe, it must be said), it would be dubious, as we argue, to ascribe such strong causal effects to nega- tive media coverage. Attitudes to migration, like attitudes to other political issues, are The Political Quarterly, Vol. 90, No. 1, January–March 2019 © The Authors 2018. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2018 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA 107