Attitudes Toward Immigration Reform in Swing Districts
In our pre-election polling of nine swing congressional districts, we found that support for comprehensive immigration reform both increases a candidate's ballot support and improves the public's opinion of him or her on key qualities and attributes. Candidates associated with support for comprehensive reform were perceived more favorably than candidates supporting enforcement only. After we inform voters that one candidate supports comprehensive reform (who we label "Supporter" in this memo) and another candidate favors enforcement and benefit cut-off (who we call "the Opponent" in this memo), significantly more voters trust the Supporter to handle immigration reform and improving the economy and more voters believe the Supporter will stand up for the middle class. Not only does support for a comprehensive approach not hurt the Supporter on handling the economy and standing up for the middle class, it actually helps increase the public's trust of the Supporter on these important economic-related characteristics.