Notes on Immigration and Voter Shifts

Trump's Gains Among Voters of Color

  • Donald Trump experienced a relatively strong showing among voters of color in the 2024 election.
  • Data from AP VoteCast indicates that Trump's share of the Black and Latino vote increased by 8 points each between 2020 and 2024.

Explanations for the Shifts

  • Several explanations have been proposed for these shifts, including:
    • Sexism within communities of color.
    • Pessimistic views of the economy and inflation.
    • Disinformation.
    • Social class.
    • Ideological sorting of nonwhite conservatives into the Republican Party.
  • One of the biggest factors behind Trump's growing support from nonwhite voters may be opposition to immigration.
    • Nonwhite Americans' attitudes about immigration moved sharply to the right during President Joe Biden's term, leading to a larger pool of Black and Latino voters receptive to Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric.
    • Voters of color with conservative immigration attitudes were especially likely to defect from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024.

Shifts in Immigration Opinions

  • The public's immigration attitudes have largely followed the changing discourse about the issue since Biden became president.
  • As politicians and the media shifted from criticizing unpopular Trump-era policies to expressing concern about the record number of border crossings under Biden, Americans' opinions moved in a similar direction.
  • The percentage of white, Latino, and Black Americans who agreed with the statement "immigrants drain national resources" all increased dramatically from June 2020 through December 2023 in YouGov's biweekly tracker surveys.
  • The share of Black voters who preferred deporting unauthorized immigrants to offering them a path to citizenship doubled from 12 percent in 2016 to 24 percent in 2024.
  • The share of Latinos said the same increased from 17 percent to 27 percent.
  • The rightward shifts in immigration opinions under Biden provided Trump with a much larger reservoir of receptive nonwhite voters whom he could target with anti-immigrant appeals.

Immigration Attitudes and Vote Shifts

  • Data from YouGov's SAY24 project suggests that immigration attitudes played a powerful part in shifting some of Biden's 2020 voters over to Trump in 2024.
  • YouGov's SAY24 project advantages:
    • Enormous August-September 2024 poll of almost 100,000 likely voters provides relatively large samples of Latino, Black, and Asian Americans.
    • YouGov also surveyed most of these same respondents four years ago and asked them how they voted in the 2020 election, which allows calculating net shifts in support for Trump.
  • Trump's gains were heavily concentrated among voters of color who supported using the military for deportations.
    • His vote share increased by 8 points from 2020 to 2024 among both Black and Asian Americans who favored this policy.
    • He performed 10 points better than he did four years ago among Latinos with more conservative views of immigration.
  • The strong relationship between immigration attitudes and vote shifts to Trump remains intact even after controlling for such factors as sexism, ideological conservatism, education, age, gender, and income.
  • Latinos who have shifted away from Democrats in recent years already had more conservative views about race to begin with.
  • White Americans who supported less immigration before 2015 were the most likely to support Trump in 2016 after voting for former President Barack Obama in 2012.
  • Immigration attitudes are a big piece of the puzzle in explaining Trump's surging support from voters of color.
  • Voters of color who had shifted to Trump from 2016 to 2020 had more conservative views about race and immigration.
  • Racial attitudes and opinions about immigration are more important than ever in explaining many people's votes.