Finally, our article also contributes methodologically to the literature on intra-party cohesion by showing how Twitter/X data can be used to measure party unity, instead of relying on roll-call votes and legislative speeches.

🟠Ungated version: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

The findings show elites' strategic use of labels such as "immigrant" and "refugee," as well as the role that geographic representation plays in the strategic salience of political issues in politicians' communications, particularly for less cohesive political parties.

In terms of salience, a congressional district's ethnic composition influences the salience of immigrants and refugees in 🔵Dem legislators' tweets: the more Hispanic, urban, and less Non-Hisp white a district, the more Dems tweet about the topic. There is no effect among 🔴Reps.

While 🔵Dems are unsurprisingly more positive towards "immigrants" than 🔴Reps, both are equally positive towards "refugees" (🔵D's use both terms to label southern border migrants; 🔴R's use "refugee" only for certain target groups such as potential Hong Kong refugees).

Very happy to share our new publication with João Guedes-Neto in @electoralstudies.bsky.social! In this study we analyze inter- and intra-party differences and strategic salience in US representatives' tweets on immigrants and refugees in the 2020 election campaign. 🧵

DOI: doi.org/10.1016/j.el...

We are grateful to Kim Twist, @dianebolet.bsky.social, conference and workshop participants at the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) and the University of Pittsburgh, Party Politics editor Paul Webb, and the reviewers.

Implications: 1) environment now a salient issue for Euro parties regardless of ideology; 2) environment can be used instrumentally by RRPs to pursue nationalist agenda; 3) RRPs can appeal to voters concerned w/ green issues but skeptical of migration and internationalism.

Moreover, RRPs use environmental chauvinism in response to public interest in the environment and Green party success (the latter, once again, only when public interest in the environment is high).

We find that RRPs respond to green party electoral success by increasing their emphasis on the environment, but only when the public is interested in the issue.

We use official party tweets/X posts from 5 West European countries from 2019-2021 to create measures of parties' environment and environmental chauvinism salience in their Twitter/X posts, and Google Trends to measure public interest in the environment.

RRPs will respond to green parties' electoral success and voters' interest in the environment. Moreover, they will differentiate themselves from green parties by adopting their own brand of environmentalism, what we call "environmental chauvinism."

Previous studies find that niche parties (such as greens and RRPs) have expanded their issue emphasis beyond "owned" issues. Many RRPs have recently started to talk about the environment. We argue that this responds to a strategy of both responsiveness and differentiation.

Very happy to share our new publication with Jae-Jae Spoon at Party Politics! In this article, we explore what predicts European radical right parties (RRPs)' emphasis on the environmental issue. A brief🧵#polisci > doi.org/10.1177/1354... Ungated: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

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“Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins.”
—John Locke