Knowledge and opinion in the immigration issue in the 2011 Finnish parliamentary elections

Using the Finnish National Election Study, this article examines whether one's opinion about immigration is related to the factual knowledge one has about it. Opinion is measured both in terms of a general attitude toward immigration and attitude toward work-related immigration. Contrary to what was expected, low issue saliency and high knowledge about immigration combined to predict pro-immigration attitudes. Additionally, low knowledge about immigration interacted with a disadvantaged labor-market position to predict anti-immigration attitudes. The impact of issue-specific knowledge on opinion seems to come mostly through interactions with other, conditioning, variables. The implications of these findings are discussed.