When political scientist Michael Jones-Correa of the University of Pennsylvania began looking at public opinion data published in the American National Election Study, he noticed one population missing: Latino immigrants. Now, he is working to help give them a voice.

For decades, the main source of public opinion data on American politics has been the American National Election Study, but ANES only interviewed citizens, which failed to account for the perspectives of many foreign-born adults.

Along with a colleague, James McCann of Purdue University, he decided to close the gap in the data.

Beginning in 2012, Jones-Correa, presidential professor of political science in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences, and McCann conducted the first Latino Immigrant National Election Study, or LINES, which surveyed a nationwide mix of more than 1,300 Latino citizens, permanent legal residents and people considered undocumented.

LINES was designed to parallel ANES, gathering data before and after the 2012 elections. Both studies evaluated levels of interest, participation and trust in policymakers and respondents’ perspectives of the two major political parties.

“Together, LINES and ANES readily allow for joint analysis and a more comprehensive snapshot for researchers,” says Jones-Correa. “While it was not possible to cover the entire non-citizen population, this was our way of making the study of public opinion and political behavior during a major campaign cycle more representative of the public at large.”

As a result, a group of people that had been practically invisible to public-opinion researchers could have their voices heard.

“Through this research, we are able to emphasize that Latino immigrants, including people who are not citizens, are relatively engaged in politics,” Jones-Correa says.

He was particularly interested in finding out how immigrants, regardless of legal status, learned about politics.

The results indicated that immigrants, both citizens and non-citizens, follow political campaigns closely.

“Even if the people were here as legal permanent residents or if they were ‘undocumented,’ political campaigns shape political learning for immigrants,” Jones-Correa says.

He and his colleague built upon this work last year by tracking Latino immigrants’ perspectives during a presidential campaign cycle that offered dramatic changes in the political climate.

“In 2016, the political environment reflected the positions taken by a candidate with a strong anti-immigrant stance,” Jones-Correa says. “Heading into this election, we knew that this campaign season would be contentious, bringing issues concerning immigration and multiculturalism to the forefront.”

Together, he and McCann conducted pre- and post-election surveys with more than 2,500 respondents.

In the election cycle, they examined how national elections molded immigrants’ political views and engagement.

Specifically, Jones-Correa wanted to find out if negative campaigning motivated immigrants to re-engage in civic life, or to pull back from following politics so closely. He’s just begun to analyze the data, but there are some preliminary findings.

“So far, we’ve found that, even as people are more pessimistic about the direction of the country, they are still fairly engaged, still likely to identify as being a part of this country and show absolutely no signs that they plan to return to their countries of origin,” Jones-Correa says. “In very negative campaigns, you might expect it to push people away, but it’s not what we’re finding.”

Jones-Correa and McCann plan to launch a third wave of the 2016 LINES research later this spring.