Polls say voters back “mass deportation.” That’s misleading.

This spring, an eye-opening poll from Axios suggested what once seemed unthinkable: Four in 10 Democrats were open to the idea of the US government deporting undocumented immigrants en masse. Though that share of support might seem high, other polls conducted since have found something similar, suggesting Americans at large are open to harsher, more Trumpian immigration policies.

And yet, as attention-grabbing as some of the headlines on support for mass deportations have been (and as Donald Trump and his allies continue to talk about his plans for such), those polls may not accurately capture the mood of the American electorate. Support for a policy of mass deportation, while superficially high, rests on two related complications: substantial confusion among voters about what it might actually entail, as well as a generalized desire to do something — anything — on immigration, which polls frequently report to be among Americans’ top issues.

That disconnect is because standalone polls and headlines do very little to capture the complexity of many Americans’ feelings about immigration, which often include simultaneous, and apparently contradictory, support for more immigrant-friendly policies alongside draconian ones. The real answer, more specific polling by firms like Pew Research Center suggests, lies somewhere in the middle: A good share of voters, it seems, are fine with increasing deportations. Some might even want the kind of operation Trump is floating. But many also want exceptions and protections for specific groups of immigrants who have been living in the US for a while, or have other ties to the country.

Taking a deeper look at polling on immigration

Back in August, the Pew Research Center dug into the question of mass deportations by asking registered voters their opinions on immigration levels, the value of immigrants, and what kind of exceptions they might endorse to allow undocumented immigrants to remain in the US.

The results were messy, but showed two distinct things.

First, support for “mass deportations of immigrants living in the country illegally” received majority support: 56 percent of registered voters “strongly or somewhat” favored such a proposal. That majority of voters included, unsurprisingly, 88 percent of Trump voters; it also included about 3 in 10 supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The August findings align with Pew’s earlier research, conducted in January 2024, which found a majority of Americans think “increasing deportations” of people who are living in the US illegally would improve the US immigration system and reduce southern border crossings. Republican respondents in that survey were essentially uniform in supporting such a policy; Democrats were divided, with similar shares (about 30 percent) saying deportations would make things better or worse.

At the same time, both of Pew’s surveys found Americans were also supportive of more friendly policies for undocumented immigrants, like a pathway to citizenship. The August report notes that about 6 in 10 registered voters say that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to “stay in the country legally, if certain requirements are met.” And a similar share, 58 percent, favored “allowing undocumented immigrants to legally work and stay in the country if they are married to a US citizen.”

Sahana Mukherjee, one of the Pew Research Center analysts behind the August deep-dive on “mass deportations,” told me that as many as 40 percent of registered voters who support mass deportations also support a policy that would allow undocumented spouses of US citizens to remain in the country. 

That share varies based on which candidate these voters support: About a third of Trump supporters who back mass deportations support such a plan, while about 60 percent of Harris supporters who back mass deportations do. But this group of voters with overlapping priorities suggests that when taking the temperature of the public, being open to mass deportations isn’t the same as supporting a specific policy. Support changes when you get into the details of who could be affected.

Similarly, Mukherjee said, about 40 percent of registered voters who support mass deportations — one-third of the Trump supporters who do so, and two-thirds among the same pool of Harris supporters — also endorse the idea of undocumented immigrants being allowed to remain in the US “if certain conditions are met.”

Other high-quality polls second these nuanced, seemingly contradictory feelings: A September Ipsos poll found 54 percent of American adults supported a mass deportation plan, while, at the same time, 68 percent would also support a “pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US as children.”

Similar dynamics hold true among Hispanic and Latino respondents, with a twist: While about 4 in 10 Latinos in the two most recent high-quality polls of these voters backed some kind of deportation program, a much higher share also supported some kind of pathway to citizenship. 

A New York Times-Siena poll of Hispanics from October, for example, found 67 percent of Hispanics backed a pathway to citizenship for “all undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States” while 45 percent supported deporting immigrants living illegally in the US. A poll from NBC/Telemundo in September showed similar levels of support for deportations, while 87 percent of Hispanics backed a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought as children to the US, and 91 percent supported that pathway for undocumented spouses.

Making sense of these policy nuances

So why do voters hold seemingly conflicting views on immigration? Pro-immigrant advocates argue that there isn’t a contradiction here — those competing numbers instead represent people who don’t understand exactly what “mass deportation” means or what a deportation program would look like in practice. 

Americans might not understand that deportations of all undocumented immigrants would include deportations of DACA recipients and longtime neighbors or friends who have been living normally and are bedrocks of local communities, advocates and researchers say — rather than only recent arrivals, or those few migrants who commit violent crimes yet get outsize media and political attention, who they may view differently.

Mukherjee said there’s also a degree of nuance that issue and horserace polls might not be picking up, since they aren’t necessarily equipped to ask in-depth questions.

“We asked about one requirement specifically in the survey, which is looking at if you’re married to a US citizen, but it remains to be seen whether there are other requirements that people are also thinking about,” Mukherjee said. “What we hear about in everyday discourse, in the media, is if you have a child who is US born, or if you yourself came as a child. We didn’t get into this in the survey, but it’s possible these are some of the requirements people were thinking about, and perhaps that could be influencing that share of people who support both.”

At the same time, when it comes to complex policy options, and especially to immigration policy, Americans can be idiosyncratic in their opinions. 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, Steven Kull, the director of the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland, told me.

“Questions that are just like, ‘do you favor or oppose mass deportation’ I think are very limited in their value, because you don’t know what it means,” Kull said. “All people know is ‘deport a large number of people.’ And 1,000 people is a lot of people. Ten thousand is a lot of people. It’s not clear that it’s 11 million — that the policy is to deport 11 million — and that it would entail a massive operation, and all that has to be clear to really understand what public opinion is on the issue.”

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.

“There is some appeal to the idea [of mass deportation] — let’s be clear about that. But it’s not that people have it all crystallized in their mind,” Kull said.

How is this playing out on the campaign trail?

Immigration reform advocates and some Democratic strategists are doing their best to highlight that nuance when advising Democrats on how to respond to Trump’s escalating rhetoric around immigration and immigrants. They urge Democrats to be clear about just who would get caught up in a broad mass deportation scheme — and to contrast that with a more “balanced” Democratic approach to immigration and the border.

In a private memo prepared for national Democratic campaigns looking to address Trump’s mass deportation position and shared with Vox, strategists argue that this polling picture presents Democrats with a narrow path to repudiate the Trump approach while acknowledging the real concerns some voters have with recent waves on migration in the Biden years.

“We have more than enough reason to believe that voters, when asked their opinion on deportations, take it to mean the deportation of people who have recently crossed the border, as well as known criminal elements,” the strategists advise. They highlight Trump running mate JD Vance’s October debate statement explaining this deportation scheme (emphasis original to the memo):

“So we’ve got 20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country. What do we do with them? I think the first thing that we do is we start with the criminal migrants. About a million of those people have committed some form of crime in addition to crossing the border illegally. I think you start with deportations on those folks.”

“The Vance position as stated here is likely popular,” the strategists explain. “That is why Harris and Democrats cannot allow him to frame his position in that way, especially when we know their actual plans call for the deportation of all undocumented immigrants (including spouses and Dreamers).”

Complex feelings on immigration and potential deportation programs offer Democrats an opportunity to stake out more moderate ground when discussing immigration policy — and to prevent immigration opponents from defining the terms of the debate over policy. They’re also an important reminder that it can be perilous to trust top-line numbers and polling results without digging into the details, or presenting voters with more options to begin with. Recent polls all show a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, yes, but they also show that there is room for pro-immigrant candidates to shape the national debate and make a vocal case for Americans and immigrants.