Trump and his allies have described their intentions toward immigrants in openly fascist terms. Trump has said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and that “getting them out will be a bloody story.” He has promised to use the military to round up millions of immigrants — including people here legally — into mass detention camps and deport them, causing unthinkable social and economic chaos. Yet for months, we’ve seen headlines claiming that most Americans, including a substantial portion or even a majority of Latinos, support mass deportations.
These headlines are the result of what I call “poll-washing” — using surveys to “reveal” popular support for something the survey-takers don’t fully understand. There is abundant evidence, often in the same surveys, that people support the abstract idea of “mass deportation,” yet oppose the particulars of what Trump’s planned mass deportation would actually entail. But we don’t hear anything about this contradiction. And that silence risks lending Trump’s plans false legitimacy.
Voters' opinions quickly change once they realize that Trump can and will sweep up noncitizens — documented or not — who have lived here for decades.
For instance, 54% of voters in a September Scripps/Ipsos poll said they support “the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.” but a much larger share (68%) said they support a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, who would face deportation under Trump’s plans. In an October New York Times/Siena poll, 45% of Hispanic voters said they support “Deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally back to their home countries” — yet 67% said they support “Providing a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States.”
In focus groups for the Research Collaborative, we often see that Latinos open to voting for Trump don’t realize that his deportation plans could sweep up their own friends or family members. They presume that he will only deport people who have crossed recently. But their opinions quickly change once they realize that Trump can and will sweep up noncitizens — documented or not — who have lived here for decades.
A recent survey by Data for Progress confirms that this dynamic holds true for most voters nationwide. When voters were given nine specific examples of immigrants who lack legal status, only two categories had majority support for deportation — a person who recently crossed the border, and a person who has a criminal record for a nonviolent offense. For the seven other examples, such as a doctoral student who overstayed their visa or a person who has lived here for 15 years and has U.S.-born children, less than a third of respondents supported deportation.
This poll-washing is very dangerous for two reasons. First, a potentially decisive number of voters (not just Latinos), who would reject Trump if they knew his actual plans, might instead choose to stay home or even vote for him. Second, should Trump win, it will falsely appear that he has a mandate for his violent and disruptive mass deportation plans.
Whether Trump loses this year will depend on whether enough voters understand how much they have to lose if he wins.
Voters are more likely to turn out if they feel they have something to lose by staying home. Poll-washing completely erases this from the conversation. Pundits try to predict people’s reasons for voting by looking at surveys that rank the issues “most important” to voters. As we saw in the 2022 midterms, however, people might rank “abortion” as being less “important” than “the economy” on a survey — but they will still turn out in droves to defeat or prevent an abortion ban. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, with Trump’s three nominees providing the crucial votes, people suddenly understood how much they had to lose if they voted for MAGA.
The most alarming thing about this election has been how much less alarm there is about the prospects of a second Trump term than there was four years ago, despite the substantial evidence that we should be much more alarmed now than then. As I’ve long argued, whether Trump loses this year will depend on whether enough voters understand how much they have to lose if he wins. We can’t predict this with a poll — but we can change it by doing all we can to inform voters about the stakes. And that includes conducting and covering polls responsibly.