Public opinion on immigration is moving left | Weekly roundup for July 13, 2025
Last week in political data: Gallup immigration polling; Majority support for Mamdani's policies; First U.S. House midterms forecast; And what Trump's win has in common with Canada and London
Dear readers,
Welcome back to Strength In Numbers. This is your Sunday briefing covering new data on politics and public opinion.
This week, I’m unpacking new polling showing voters are turning against Trump on immigration in significant numbers — and what history tells us about presidential overreach and backlash.
Gallup finds public opinion moving left on immigration
A new report from Gallup out this week finds a significant increase in the public’s liberal attitudes on immigration. The highlights of their report are here:
30% of Americans want immigration decreased, down from 55% a year ago
A record-high 79% of adults consider immigration good for the country
There’s been a meaningful decrease in support for building a border wall, mass deportation
Gallup visualizes changes on these, and other, questions since their 2024 polling in this notable chart:
Apart from the liberalizing trend, one thing I took away from this: Look how high support is for extending a path to citizenship to unauthorized immigrants! At 78%, it’s twice as high as support for mass deportations. That’s a serious advantage for Democrats, if they can reframe the debate on immigration. In our June Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, voters were drawn to a message on immigration that combines securing the border with a path to citizenship for immigrants already here.
Some context about this data: Way back in April, I used hundreds of questions about individual components of Trump’s immigration agenda to predict that broader public opinion would soon turn against the president. The unpopularity of the administration’s individual policies gave Democrats the opportunity to partially reframe the debate over immigration on their terms. After a few notable examples (the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case and Trump’s response to the LA protests), Trump’s approval on immigration and deportations fell dramatically.
Some political writers discussed the new Gallup poll as evidence of a thermostatic backlash to the president. That explains some of the increase in liberal immigration attitudes, but not all of it (see the empirical review here). Because while pundits view the thermostat as a structural force in politics, a gravitational pull away from the party in power that happens in isolation from political events and attitudes, the original academic theory of thermostatic reaction hinges on policy change, not power.
The backlash to Trump on immigration does not happen if Trump does not move immigration policy to the right. As our survey experiments have shown, when people learn about Trump’s deportation policies, they move away from him on immigration altogether.
Our coverage here at Strength In Numbers has been way ahead of the curve on immigration, and the Gallup poll is just the latest example of opinion converging on our predictions. It pays to analyze politics with facts and data, not priors and partisan agendas.
A final note: Look how unpopular Trump’s immigration policy is with independents. Just 24 percent of them approve of what he’s doing! This is a group that Trump won with a majority of the vote in the 2024 election. Somewhere around half of independents who voted for Trump disapprove of his immigration policy.
Trump’s not a popular president, and this is not an issue he’s winning on.
What you missed at Strength In Numbers
SIN published three articles last week:
Can Democrats learn something about appealing to disengaged voters and young people from Zohran Mamdani?
Empirically how large is the potential constituency for Elon Musk’s new “America Party”? Is he going to birth a serious political movement with dozens of wins in influencial federal elections, or is he the next Cornel West?
And here’s last week’s data roundup.
Last up, our work on the Big Beautiful Bill last week got a good shoutout on Friday from Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar:
It’s great to see hard data shaping political debate, and I’m glad for the opportunity to brag about the positive impact our work is having on the discourse. Upgrade to a paid membership to Strength In Numbers, and get more insights like this — even before Congress does!
Q&A submissions for July are open! Email questions@gelliottmorris.com.
Even more numbers!
A new forecast of the 2026 midterm elections to the U.S. House of Representatives finds Democrats with a strong advantage:
This is the first model I’ve seen for the midterms. It suggests the Democrats would reclaim control of the House with 231 seats, while the Republicans would return to the minority with 204.
It is a sensible estimate, and maybe useful as a first batch of data informing your prior. But I'd really like to see uncertainty intervals on forecasts.
Yahoo conducted a poll of a bunch of Zohran Mamdani’s “socialist” policy proposals this week. Most of them are supported by a majority of Americans, even though Mamdani is not.
For example, 62% approve and 24% disapprove of free child care for every child aged 6 weeks to 5 years (+38-point margin).
And a rent freeze for low-income tenants scores 60% approval and 22% disapproval (also +38).
Here’s a great investigation from the Washington Post of Trump’s victory with non-white voters in 2024. This is an investigation because WaPo is trying to figure out why the same shift is happening in different elections in the US, and abroad, too. So is it really about Trump, or is something bigger going on here and elsewhere?
Finally, a good read from the political scientists at Mischiefs of Faction on why Trump, a supposed “populist,” pushes for unpopular policies and is so unpopular.
Updates from the data portal
Trump’s approval rating has ticked up slightly, but within the uncertainty interval:
Although the president reamins underwater on key issues:
And economic growth remains lower than average, despite new stock market highs:
The charts on the data portal update every day. Feel free to use and cite them liberally!
And that’s it for this week!
If you have any feedback on the format or content of this post, email me at feedback@gelliottmorris.com or submit it anonymously here. I read every email I receive.
Thanks for being a part of our nerdy little corner of the internet. I’m glad we have this space,
Elliott
Thanks for the numbers and analysis! I think it might be time to stop using terms like left/right to describe policy stance, however. I feel like both parties are unmoored enough in governing ideology and dependent on populist movement that they cannot foundationally claim what is a left vs. right ideal anymore. I noticed the Gallup poll does not use left/right terms in its questions. It might be time to drop the terms in analysis, to bring back focus to policy instead of sides. Just a thought!
Trump won about half of the Hispanic voters in 2024, and that group accounted for 10% of his votes. You/Gov polling of Hispanics, between June 2 and July 7, shows a 12 point drop in his approval and a 16 point drop in his handling of immigration.
If this shift carries over to Republicans in the midterms, could be even worse for them than it looks now.