How do historical legacies shape contemporary political outcomes? The article proposes a novel attitudinal mechanism through which distant interethnic competition can influence political preferences in the present. It theorizes that historically conditioned predispositions at the local level can moderate the effects of national-level framing of a policy issue. Using Poland as a test case, I show that subnational variation in support for EU accession was influenced by populist claims about the increase in Jewish influence in the postaccession period. Anti-Semitic cues resonated with voters in areas with historically large Jewish populations and a contentious interethnic past, where latent anti-Semitism persisted throughout the communist period. To provide evidence for this argument, the article draws on rich historical and contemporary data at the county, town, and individual level of analysis and utilizes novel research methods.
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