The Polls—Trends: The Asymmetric Polarization of Immigration Opinion in the United States
Published in Public Opinion Quarterly, 2023
Recommended citation: Ollerenshaw, Trent and Ashley E. Jardina. Forthcoming. “The Polls—Trends: The Asymmetric Polarization of Immigration Opinion in the United States” Public Opinion Quarterly.
(Forthcoming) Abstract: In this paper, we analyze trends in Americans’ immigration attitudes and policy preferences nationally and across partisan and racial/ethnic groups. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Democrats and Republicans shared similarly negative attitudes toward immigrants and high levels of support for restrictionist immigration policies. Beginning in the 2010s and continuing through the early 2020s, however, Democrats’ aggregate immigration opinions liberalized considerably. Trends towards more liberal immigration preferences are especially pronounced for white Democrats post-2016, though they are also seen among Hispanic and Black Democrats. Opinion regarding immigration among Republicans, however, remained mostly stable over this period, growing more conservative on some dimensions (e.g., border security) but more liberal on others (e.g., amnesty). Immigration opinion in the US has liberalized during the twenty-first century; however, this one-sided liberalization has left Democrats and Republicans more divided on immigration than at any point since national surveys began consistently measuring immigration opinion in the late-20th century.