The Rise of the Single-Issue Immigration Voter

4,175 words

On August 15, Donald Trump made the following statement about immigration and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at a press conference:

“. . . [W]e’re going to close the border and get the crooked ones out, the bad ones out. And we’re gonna let a lot of people come in. Because we need more people. Especially with AI coming and all of the different things. And the farmers need, everybody needs. But we’re going to make sure they’re not murderers, killers, drug dealers, and the kind of people we have, largely, coming in right now.”

This was a continuation of the party line that illegal immigration is bad but legal immigration is good. For example, Trump has promised to carry out mass deportations of illegal aliens while also promising to pass out green cards to college graduates. (We conducted a poll on this green card proposal here.)

However, AI should lower the need for immigration due to greater efficiency, so using AI to justify more legal immigration is prima facie nonsensical. Thus, we decided to conduct a poll about AI, immigration, and most importantly, how best to pressure policy makers on immigration through creating a single-issue immigration voter bloc.

The Homeland Institute polled 971 respondents who are politically and demographically representative of white, non-Hispanic American registered voters between August 21 and August 28, 2024. The margin of error was plus or minus 3%.

1. General Immigration Attitudes

We exposed respondents to a series of statements about immigration, some of which were positive while others were negative.

More respondents disagreed than agreed that immigration makes everyone better off by boosting the GDP:

More Independents were in some form of disagreement at 43.2% than those in agreement at 30.2% This means that appeals to the GDP to justify immigration among the white electorate will likely fall upon deaf ears.

However, respondents did not understand as well that legal immigration is bad for American workers due to supply and demand:

Part of this may be a long-standing issue that labeling immigration as “legal” magically makes it good in the general public’s eyes, along with how the iron laws of supply and demand are supposedly suspended whenever immigration is involved. Thus, immigration skeptics should focus on explaining that legal immigration is bad for native-born workers due to supply and demand in the labor market.

Another pretext for immigration is that diversity enriches society:

Vastly more respondents were in some form of agreement than disagreement with this statement. This indicates that further education of the general public on how diversity is actually a weakness rather than a strength is needed. Additionally, that almost twice as many Democrats strongly agreed as Republicans who strongly disagreed highlights how the Left has more emotional intensity about immigration than the Right. Galvanizing the Right on immigration is essential if there is to be any meaningful pushback.

But despite having a favorable view of immigration bringing diversity, respondents overwhelmingly agreed that immigrants have trouble assimilating which increases conflict and decreases social cohesion:

48.6% of all respondents were in some form of agreement with this statement, compared to 32.4% who were in some form of disagreement. This includes 48.9% of Independents who agreed versus 28.4% who disagreed.

A similarly high number of respondents agreed that the recent unrest in the UK raises doubts about whether immigration and multiculturalism are conducive to a harmonious society. 43.5% of all respondents agreed with this statement along with 67.3% of Republicans. About twice as many Independents agreed at 45.3% as those who disagreed at 22.3%.

We also asked respondents whether they think that support for and opposition to immigration is driven by greed and racism:

 

16.5% of all respondents, 27.6% of Republicans, 15.8% of Independents, and even 4.3% of Democrats agreed that many people who support immigration are motivated by racism against whites. This includes 11.5% of Republicans who strongly agreed. This strongly suggests that the basic tenets of white identity politics are breaking into the mainstream.

 

21.8% of all respondents, 33% of Republicans, 24.5% of Independents, and even 6% of Democrats agreed that many people who support immigration are motivated by greed. However, even among Republicans, they were still outnumbered by those who disagreed. Furthermore, slightly more respondents agreed with the mirror opposite statement that opposition to immigration is supported by greed.

This shows that while the general public is beginning to understand that big business profits from immigration at the expense of native-born workers, further education is needed to explain that big business supports immigration for crass economic self-interest because it allows them to pay their workers less. For example, a leaked Amazon document stated that higher diversity lowered the risk of unionization.[1] Pro-immigration is anti-labor.

Maintaining first-world living standards, such as the ability of a working family to afford their own home as portrayed as normal in popular 1990s cartoon The Simpsons, isn’t greed. It is simply demanding a basic standard of living. Those who demand that we abandon such standards are the ones who are greedy.

Immigration is oftentimes touted as a quick solution to low birthrates. But as former Congressman Steve King remarked, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

24.2% of all respondents, 56.8% of Republicans, 33.1% of Independents, and even 7.9% of Democrats agreed that it would be better in the long-term to increase American birthrates than to increase immigration. 34.3% of Republicans strongly agreed. While more respondents disagreed at 39.2% than agreed, this was mostly driven by Democrat respondents. The 33.1% of Independents who agreed were only slightly outnumbered by the 35.4% who disagreed. Thus, the vast majority of the pushback to a populist candidate proposing natalist policies as a solution to low birthrates over immigration would probably be from voters whose votes weren’t ever in the cards to begin with. (For reference, we also conducted a poll on natalist policies here).

But our most interesting finding was that 22.7% of all respondents, 18.7% of Republicans, 15.9% of Independents, and 22.5% of Democrats agreed with the statement that “Demographics is destiny.” This includes 7.2% of Republicans who strongly agreed.

While more respondents disagreed than agreed, that many respondents neither agreed nor disagreed or answered “I don’t know” suggests that white identity politics are not seen as toxic so much as irrelevant. Thus, activists should focus on explaining why demographics is important rather than fretting about smear campaigns which appear to have proven ineffective.

It should be noted that many of the surprising number of Democrats who agreed probably did so on the grounds that changing demographics and the accompanying electoral and cultural consequences are a good thing.

That only slightly more males than females agreed should dispel the notion that women are not open to white identity politics:

2.      Artificial Intelligence and Immigration

That vastly more respondents across all party likes disagreed that immigration has slowed the development of AI and robotics shows this is a major point which requires further education. It also highlights how what may seem like a natural conclusion to immigration skeptics may not be so obvious to the general public.

Respondents were better at understanding that if AI puts people out of work, then there will be a lower need for immigration. This is important because a need for labor (or rather, a desire to pay low wages) is a popular pretext for justifying mass immigration.

While slightly more respondents at 37.4% disagreed that we will need less immigration because AI will put people out of work than those who agreed at 34.3%, this was again mostly driven by Democrats. More Independents at 37.5% agreed versus the 30.2% of Independents who disagreed. This further buttresses previous findings that Democrats tend to be more emotionally intense and in lockstep on immigration than Republicans.

Unfortunately, when it came time to evaluate Trump’s aforementioned statement on AI and immigration, respondents’ answers seemed to be more informed by party affiliation than by their previous answers on immigration:

This shows the necessity of detaching immigration policy from loyalty to parties and individual candidates.

Respondents were overwhelmingly in favor of Trump’s campaign promise to conduct mass deportations of illegal immigrants (the term “undocumented” was used for neutrality).

This poll closely replicated the findings from a previous June 2024 Homeland Institute poll on the same question:

That previous poll did not mention Trump, however. That there was a slight increase in Republican support and a slight decrease in Democrat support in the current poll which does mention Trump in connection to mass deportations further emphasizes the need to separate policy from personality.

Additionally, the number of Democrats who strongly opposed mass deportations of illegal immigrants increases from 50.7% in the previous poll to 70% in the current poll. This suggests that other populist candidates should not be deterred by the drama surrounding Trump in pursuing mass deportations.

However, despite being a popular policy, almost a quarter of respondents at 24.3% think there is a 50/50 chance that Trump will follow through with mass deportations and almost another quarter at 24.4% think it is unlikely or very unlikely.

Interestingly, Democrats and Republicans thought it was more likely that Trump would follow through on mass deportations than Independents.

3.       Rise of the Single-Issue Immigration Voter?

There US electorate contains several varieties of single-issue voters, who cluster around issues such as gun rights, abortion, and the environment. Candidates generally understand that whether they agree or disagree with single-issue voters, they ignore them at their own peril. This is in part because single-issue voters are highly passionate and may be more willing to withhold their votes. Thus, they must be pandered to.

Building a coalition of single-issue immigration voters would be one way for populists to pressure candidates on immigration policy. This goal may already be in reach:

20.4% of Republicans already self-identify as single-issue immigration voters. Interestingly, while this and previous Homeland polls have revealed stronger emotional intensity among Democrats regarding immigration, fewer Democrats identify as single-issue immigration voters. One possible explanation is that other issues such as abortion and climate change overshadow immigration among Democrats given their intensity on those issues.

Wondering how single-issue immigration voters compared to other single-issue voter blocs spurred us to conduct a short follow-up poll with respondents. Of our original 971 respondents, 821 also took the follow-up poll. The demographic characteristics of the two polls were substantially the same.

In the follow-up poll, we asked respondents if they identify as single-issue voters on either side of following issues: abortion, guns, and immigration.

Despite being high profile issues which garner emotional intensity, both sides of the abortion and gun rights debate were overshadowed by single-issue immigration voters who want less immigration.

More respondents overall at 37.3% identified as single-issue immigration voters in favor of less immigration, surpassing even the 30% of all respondents who are pro-gun rights single-issue voters and the 31.4% of all respondents who are pro-choice single-issue voters.

60.2% of Republicans identified as single-issue immigration voters for less immigration, which is more than the 48.1% of Republicans who identified as single-issue voters on gun rights and even the 55.9% of Democrats who identify as single-issue pro-choice voters. This suggests that it would be wise for politicians and candidates to cater to anti-immigration voters just as much, if not more, than the gun rights and pro-choice lobbies.

Additionally, that the 32.9% of Independents for were single-issue anti-immigration voters vastly outnumbered the 7.2% of Independents who were single-issue pro-immigration voters shows that running against immigration could woo many Independent voters. That even 12.7% of Democrats identify as single-issue anti-immigration voters suggests that campaigning for lower immigration would entice more Democrat voters than by clumsy pandering to minorities through things like the Platinum Plan. These 12.7% of Democrats also decisively outnumber the 1.9% of single-issue pro-immigration Republican voters who might be lost by running against immigration.

However, 15.4% of Republican voters self-identified as single-issue pro-choice voters. This suggests that catering to the pro-life lobby could cost a Republican candidate substantially more voters than by running against immigration.

Single-issue voters may not be all that single-issue. Part of why we conducted a follow-up poll was because we were surprised by how 12% of voters in the initial poll described themselves as a single-issue voter on immigration compared to 15% who said that they were a single-issue voter on any issue at all. The numbers from our follow-up poll likewise indicate that many respondents are single-issue voters on multiple issues:

Our findings are buttressed by a Pew Research poll conducted in late summer of 2024 in which about 7 out of 10 voters said that 5 or more issues were “very important to their vote.” While asking voters what issues are “very important” to them is not the same as asking if they identify as “single-issue voters,” they are nonetheless very similar. Indeed, the fact that some respondents identified themselves as “single-issue voters” on multiple issues may indicate that they think that “single-issue” is synonymous with “very important.”

That there was a large spike in respondents identifying as single-issue voters between the initial poll and the follow-up poll might be because some respondents did not grasp the term “single-issue voter” well at first, but seeing it connected to abortion and gun rights helped to clarify it.

Returning to the initial poll, on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being very important, a quarter of Republicans at 25.2% rated immigration as very important.

For reference, a Gallup poll from the 2020 election season found that 74% of respondents rated the economy as being very to extremely important. Those numbers for the economy were 84%, healthcare 81%, gun policy 74%, and abortion 64%.[2]

Additionally, while the economy overshadowed immigration in the aforementioned Pew Research poll, immigration also overshadowed gun policy and abortion in regard to being “very important” to how those respondents would vote. Thus, the Pew Research findings corroborate our findings that immigration surpasses two of the most iconic single-issue issues in American politics.

There is ample potential to build a single-issue immigration bloc, which if properly mobilized, could exert as much pressure on policy makers as both sides of the abortion and gun rights issues do.

For a single-issue voter bloc to be effective it must be able to offer carrots, such as meme energy, volunteers, donations, etc. It also must be able to threaten sticks, mainly in the form of withholding their votes. 31.1% of Republicans strongly agreed that that voters should punish candidates who don’t represent them well at the polls:

It should be noted that agreeing with the above statement in the abstract is not the same as following through with it, and especially in an increasingly polarized electoral system where voters tend to vote against opposing candidates more than they vote for their preferred candidate.

Furthermore, as indicated in our previous polling, many Republicans are soft on legal immigration despite being staunchly opposed to illegal immigration. Our June, 2024 poll found that 70.9% of white Republican voters agreed with the statement that “Undocumented immigrants are a net negative, but legal immigrants are a net positive,” with only 12.8% disagreeing on the grounds that legal immigrants are a net negative too.

But the 7.2% of Republicans who strongly agreed with the statement that “demographics is destiny” represent a segment of the electorate which regardless of what labels they might use already has an identitarian view of immigration, rather than the prevailing civic nationalist view. And among this 7.2%, over half also strongly agreed with the statement about voters punishing candidates at the polls if they fail to represent them well:

There were only 15 Democrats, 6 Independents, and 27 Republicans for a total of 48 respondents who strongly agreed that demographics is destiny, and thus these findings have less predictive value due to their small sample size. But that over half of them, including 55.6% of Republicans, also strongly agree that voters should punish candidates who do not represent them well strongly suggests that there is fertile ground to grow a single-issue immigration voter bloc.

Of these 48 respondents, only 2 are voting for another candidate, 1 is undecided, and 1 does not plan on voting. Thus, while there is indeed fertile ground for a single-issue identitarian immigration bloc, it would be premature to declare that it is fully formed and mobilized.

4.       Conclusion

Key takeaways:

• About three fifths of Republican respondents and about a third of Independents self-identify as single-issue immigration voters who are in favor of less immigration.
• On a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being very important, a quarter of Republicans at 25.2% rated immigration as very important.
• More respondents identified as single-issue immigration voters who want less immigration than single-issue voters on either side of abortion or gun rights.
• 7.2% of Republican respondents strongly agree with the identitarian statement that “demographics is destiny.” Of these, over half strongly agreed that voters should punish candidates at the polls for not representing their interests well.
• Agreeing that lackluster candidates should be punished at the polls is not the same as following through with that belief.
• 16.5% of all respondents, 27.6% of Republicans, 15.8% of Independents, and even 4.3% of Democrats agreed that many people who support immigration are motivated by racism against whites. 11.5% of Republicans strongly agreed.
• More respondents disagreed than agreed that immigration makes everyone better off by boosting the GDP.
• Despite having higher emotional intensity about immigration than Republicans, fewer Democrats identify as single-issue immigration voters than Republicans.
• The general public still tends to have a favorable view of diversity and thus requires further education on how diversity is a weakness and not a strength.
• The general public requires further education on how immigration is oftentimes motivated by corporate greed.
• More respondents agree than disagree that immigrants oftentimes have trouble assimilating and that the recent unrest in the UK raises doubts about whether immigration and multiculturalism are conducive to a harmonious society. This includes many Independents.
• Trump’s campaign promise to conduct mass deportations of illegal immigrants is very popular. However, many respondents had doubts about whether he would follow through.
• Immigration skeptics may want to separate policy from parties and candidates.

Notes

[1] https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61403

[2] https://www.thoughtco.com/single-issue-voters-5214543