Brothers or Invaders? How Crisis-Driven Migrants Shape Voting Behavior

We study the electoral effects of the arrival of 1.3 million Venezuelan refugees in Colombia asa consequence of the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis. We exploit the fact that forced migrantsdisproportionately locate in places with earlier settlements of Venezuelans after the intensificationof the crisis. We find that larger migration shocks increase voter's turnout and shiftvotes from left- to right-wing political ideologies. These effects are predominantly driven byvoter's concerns on the economic effects of migrants as well as by a novel channel that we callelectoral manipulation, whereby political parties make the forced migration shock salient tovoters in order to demonize the political agenda of contenders