How Anti-immigrant Right-wing Populist Advertisements Affect Young Voters: Symbolic Threats, Economic Threats and the Moderating Role of Education

Across Europe, right-wing populist parties use advertisements that depict symbolic and economic threats posed by immigrants. Yet research on the effects of such advertisements is scarce, especially when it comes to young voters. We theorise that the attitudinal effects of threatening advertisements depend on young voters' education level. In an experiment, a total of N = 162 pupils were randomly assigned to three conditions, a symbolic threat advertisement, an economic threat advertisement or a control condition. Exposure to the symbolic and economic threat advertisements led to a significant increase in negative attitudes towards immigrants. However, the economic threat advertisement was only effective for pupils with lower compared to higher educational degrees. The effects did not depend on party predisposition.