Voters sour on mass deportation as citizenship support holds strong, even with AZ Republicans

Voters overwhelmingly favor a path to citizenship for the 15 million immigrants living in the country without legal status and believe that President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign is hurting the economy, according to a new survey of voters. 

A new report from Wave Polling and Research found that voters across the country, including in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, increasingly disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of immigration and aren’t convinced by claims from Republicans that mass deportation will lead to lower costs and higher wages. 

According to that report, 62% of Americans believe mass deportations are hurting the country’s economy and only 23% agreed that deporting all immigrants living in the country without authorization would lead to better wages for them. 

G. Elliott Morris, the founder of Wave Polling and Research, noted that offering immigrants a path to citizenship is highly popular across levels of residency. When given hypothetical requirements for citizenship, voters still preferred offering legal status to immigrants who have lived in the country for five or more years. 

“It’s still incredibly popular to give citizenship to people who were here as recently as the pandemic,” Morris said Oct. 27 during a virtual discussion of the report.  

While 79% of voters agreed that citizenship should be an option for immigrants who have lived in the country for 10 or more years, are paying taxes and pass a background check, support for immigrants who have lived in the country for at least five years, are employed and don’t have a criminal record wasn’t much lower, at 72%. 

Multiple efforts to create a path to citizenship at the federal level have been unsuccessful for the past two decades. A bipartisan push to move beyond that stonewalled movement three years ago sought to grant Dreamers — immigrants brought to the country as children — and others a temporary form of legal status. Known as the Dignity Act, the legislation would have made Dreamers eligible for a 10-year work permit and shielded them from deportation. It would also have given other immigrants the opportunity to apply for a new category of lawful status after paying $5,000 over seven years, passing a background check and enrolling in healthcare coverage, among other requirements. 

But a Dignity Act-style compromise doesn’t appear to resonate with voters. Wave Polling and Research found that 50% of voters oppose legislation like the Dignity Act that would create a new legal class of immigrant workers instead of a clear path to citizenship. 

The national support for a pathway to citizenship is echoed at the state level in Arizona. The 2026 Arizona Voters’ Agenda found that 86% of voters planning to cast a ballot in November believe the federal government should work on creating a “clearer and easier legal pathway” to citizenship for immigrants who meet certain requirements. And that support holds across party lines: 75% of Republicans in Arizona agreed with that statement, even though mass deportations and limiting immigration is a core part of the national GOP platform.

Voter attitudes towards immigrants and the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement policies is likely to impact the midterm elections. In surveys taken by Wave Polling and Research, voters ranked Democrats as more trustworthy on handling immigration and deportations than Republicans and reported trusting them equally on border security issues. Morris attributed that shift to disapproval of the violent tactics employed by federal immigration agents carrying out Trump’s agenda and said it creates an unprecedented opening for Democrats to make their pitches to voters. 

“Democrats are now trusted to handle immigration for the first time in a decade, even on deportations and crime and coming up to even on border security, which Republicans had a 30-point lead on in 2024,” Morris said.

Concern over immigration rates and border security dominated Trump’s electoral campaign two years ago, and helped award him the presidency. But those issues now appear to be dragging his public opinion approval rating and the perception of his party down, according to Morris. In conversations with voters who previously supported Trump, researchers found that immigration was among the top reasons they’ve turned away from the Republican and his party this year.

“Immigration is a big driver of defection from Trump, it’s not just the economy for the midterms,” Morris said.