The Democracy Project + UCLA Nationscape polls revealed fractures paralleling previously reported regional immigration history
By Colin Woodard
With the Trump administration terrorizing immigrant communities — using masked federal agents to detain and deport law-abiding migrants by the tens of thousands — public attitudes about immigration and identity are becoming increasingly important. At Nationhood Lab, we have a wealth of polling data we processed but haven’t previously reported on.
Regular readers are familiar with the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project engaged in one of the most ambitious and detailed polls of the U.S. electorate ever undertaken. Each week from July 2019 to January 2021, Nationscape surveyed approximately 6000 Americans about a vast range of policy questions, political attitudes and other preferences, yielding over a half million interviews overall, with over 1000 in every congressional district. The data can be sorted at a county-level, which allows us to sort results based on the historically-based regional cultures identified in the American Nations model.
We previously looked at immigration and immigration policy attitudes in detail, but Nationscape also surveyed Americans about their feelings toward particular groups of people, including undocumented immigrants. The data shows regional divides paralleling those we discussed here last year.
Because about 72 percent of undocumented immigrants are Hispanic, we broke out respondents by whether they too were Hispanic or not. Were non-Hispanic people more likely to be cool toward the undocumented? Would this be true in some regions but not others? Would residents of regions with few people of Hispanic origin be more or less likely to approve of the undocumented?
At the top of this post you can see what we found in regards to respondents who said they did not consider themselves Hispanic.
When we looked at people’s opinions about immigration policy — support for “building the Wall” or Trump’s Muslim ban or deporting all undocumented people — the regions followed a broad pattern. In those that traditionally had lots of immigrants and still do — New Netherland, Left Coast, El Norte, Spanish Caribbean — popular opinion is the most pro-immigrant. In those that had almost no immigrants in 1900 but have quite a few today — Greater Appalachia and Deep South, especially — the public has an anti-immigrant stances. In regions that either had lots of immigrants before and not so many now (Yankeedom, the Midlands), or had a moderate number then and now (Far West) — opinion is in between. Tidewater, a region whose legacy culture has been collapsing with remarkable speed over the past 20 years, is also in the middle, while New France — which had few immigrants in 1900 or today — breaks the mold by being extremely hostile.
As you can see from the data at the top of the piece, this same pattern broadly holds in terms of non-Hispanic’s feelings toward undocumented immigrants. The undocumented’s favorability is underwater with non-Hispanic Greater Appalachian residents by -23.6 points, by -20.3 by those in New France, and by -19.9 in the Deep South. Conversely, non-Hispanics in immigrant-heavy Spanish Caribbean, New Netherland and Left Coast look on the undocumented favorably by +1.3, +2.3, and +5.7 points respectively. In El Norte, where Hispanics are the largest ethnicity and comprise nearly half the population, non-Hispanics are only slightly less warm toward the undocumented, at -5.4 points.
Unfortunately, Nationscape didn’t survey on undocumented favorability every week. For the question, the national sample was of 21,687 Non-Hispanic Americans, with regional n= ranging from 135 in New France to 4,341 in Greater Appalachia. That’s a very robust poll, with margins of error of around 1 to 2 percent in each region. But, unfortunately, it’s not large enough to give us reliable results for Hispanics in regions where they thin on the ground. Overall, the question was asked of 1,236 Hispanic Americans, including 227 from the Deep South and well over 100 in five other American Nations regions. That’s enough to give us a reasonable sense of Hispanic opinion in these regions, with a margin of error of about +/- 7 to 8 percent. For the other regions, the sample sizes were smaller, and we’ve excluded them from the analysis.
Here’s what we found:
It’s clear that Hispanic Americans, on average, are more sympathetic toward undocumented people than non-Hispanics are, which isn’t a big surprise. But look at the differences among Hispanics from different American Nations regions. Among Deep Southern and Greater Appalachian Hispanics, the undocumented only have +7.9 and +9 point favorability, which isn’t that much better than they do among non-Hispanics on the Left Coast. Meanwhile, they stand at a whopping +33.8 with Hispanics in El Norte, which makes that region the most undocumented-friendly in the country.
Indeed, taken in conjunction with the non-Hispanic results, it appears likely one’s region has a significant effect on attitudes toward undocumented residents.
Thanks to Tova Perlman at our geospatial partners, Motivf, for the data wrangling.
— Colin Woodard is the director of Nationhood Lab and author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America and the newly released Nations Apart: How Clashing Regional Cultures Shattered America.