Washington, DC — A question in the CBS News/YouGov poll released this weekend found 57-43% support for deporting “all immigrants in the U.S. illegally.” In response, Equis co-founder Carlos Odio wrote, “Now, more than ever, pollsters & reporters have a responsibility to go deeper. In polling this year there has been high support for “mass deportations”… and low support for deporting long-established immigrants (ie most of the undoc).”
CNN polling guru Ariel Edwards-Levy recently assessed in, “As Trump vows mass deportation, polls suggest growing support – but not a mandate,”
“[T]he level of public backing for mass deportation varies significantly depending on the framing of the question, suggesting there are limits to the public appetite for denying any pathway to citizenship to people in the US illegally … Surveys that ask respondents to choose between deportation and a path to citizenship, meanwhile, often find more support for the latter. In CNN’s final pre-election survey this year, two-thirds of registered voters said that the government’s top priority for dealing with immigrants living illegally in the US should be developing a plan to allow some to become legal residents.” Click through this CNN link for a table presenting a range of recent public polls gauging public sentiment on these questions. Also see this good overview by Christian Paz in Vox and additional context from this Data for Progress polling snapshot.”
The renewed focus on Americans’ views toward mass deportation comes as Trump and allies are claiming a mandate to pursue their agenda – an assertion to which Greg Sargent noted,“ If media is too credulous about Trump’s claims of a mandate, he’ll feel more emboldened to pursue authoritarian extremes. Media has a real responsibility to get this right. Don’t blow it” (also read more in Sargent and Julia Azari’s discussion here).
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“When confronted with the details and scope of Trump’s proposed mass deportations, the American public strongly rejects the concept. In fact, when offered the choice between mass deportations and Trump’s ‘enforcement only’ approach versus an approach that includes both an earned path to legal status for the undocumented alongside measures to ensure an orderly and secure border, the ‘both/and’ approach is significantly more popular.
The bottom line is that Trump does not have a mandate for mass deportations or sending in the military to round up our immigrant neighbors. When Americans witness the reality of the chaos, cruelty and costs associated with Trump’s mass deportations, they will reject it.”
See below for additional polling and takeaways underscoring the above points:
Exit polls and election eve polling:
- In both the national Edison exit poll (relied on by CNN and others) and in the AP VoteCast massive election poll (relied on by AP and Fox News), the option of offering long-settled undocumented immigrants the chance at legal status was more popular than mass deportation in a head-to-head choice, with a 56-40% margin in the CNN/Edison exit poll and by a 55-40% margin in the Fox News/AP VoteCast version.
- The 2024 American Electorate Voter Poll, a survey of more than 9,000 people who actually voted in 2024, indicates strong support for legal status for immigrants across racial lines. Among all voters, it was favored by 63% -37% (Q: Passing a law to provide permanent legal status to undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for a very long time, including Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as children). A majority of White voters supported this (58% – 42%) and higher levels of African-American (80% – 20%), Latino (80% – 20%), Asian American/Pacific Islander (72% – 28%) and Native American voters (67% – 33%) did. In a head to head battle between fictional Candidate A and Candidate B, voters chose the candidate who offered “a path to citizenship” as opposed to the candidate who offered to “detain and deport immigrants already here” by a 60-40% margin. Find crosstabs and additional details here: https://2024electionpoll.us/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/1.-Results-by-race.pdf
Additional polling and context
- American voters still strongly prefer a balanced approach to immigration, both an orderly border AND support for legal immigration/citizenship, instead of Trump-style mass deportation and enforcement-only. The American public, including Latino voters and broad majorities of battleground state voters, endorse a balanced approach that pairs an orderly border alongside a pathway to citizenship for immigrant families, instead of a mass deportation-only alternative (see a roundup of polls here and October 2024 example from the University of Maryland, Program for Public Consultation (PPC) – voters prefer citizenship over details of mass deportation by a 58-26% margin nationally).
- As Steven Kull, the director of the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland told Christian Paz of Vox in “Polls say voters back “mass deportation.” That’s misleading“: “Surveys that don’t specify what ‘mass deportation’ means may also be tracking inflated support for the kind of hardline stance the Trump/Vance campaign is offering … Kull’s team instead has run surveys of national samples and groups of swing-state voters that provide additional information and arguments in favor and against either mass deportations or pathways to citizenship. The result, again, is complex, but support for mass deportations falls when presented against the option for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants provided they meet specific requirements.”
- Polling conducted by Professor Tom K. Wong of the US Immigration Policy Center at UC San Diego, found that support for mass deportation drops from a net positive for Trump to a net negative when basic context is added to the issue. Providing context about the impact of mass deportation on long-term residents, on family separation and the economy moved voters against mass deportation.
- Ron Brownstein of CNN (here) featured a quote from “Carlos Odio, a Democratic pollster who focuses on Latino voters,” who said “surveys show that support for mass deportation plummets among not only Latinos but also other voters when ‘people learn that Trump’s plans are to deport [undocumented] people who have been living and working here for decades.’”
