An interesting poll reported in the Arizona Republic Sunday July 25th.

While overall Arizonans support SB 1070, the amount of support or opposition depends on political identity, ethnicity, income  and age.

The poll showed that Republicans support SB 1070 by a margin 80% for and 10% against. On the other hand, Democrats 58% of oppose SB 1070 and only 38% of Democrats support the new law.

As far as age goes, 36% of people age 18 to 34 support Sb 1070, while 52% oppose it. People 35 to 54 favor Sb 1070 by a margin of 64% for and 26% against. People over 55 favor SB 1070 by a margin of 63% for and 31% against.

Poll: Politics, age sway opinions on immigration law
Arizonans support or oppose SB 1070 along clear demographic lines
by Ronald J. Hansen – Jul. 25, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Most Arizona adults approve of Senate Bill 1070, with views of the immigration-enforcement measure largely running along partisan and other key demographic lines, an Arizona Republic poll has found.

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed support the law while 36 percent oppose it, according to a poll conducted by WestGroup Research. Nine percent were neutral or didn’t have a view.

Nearly half those polled believe the law has made Latinos more likely to be discriminated against and that the debate has exposed a deeper sense of racism here. A smaller number, 36 percent, reject those ideas.

The poll of 616 Arizona adults found lower support for the law than several previous polls on the subject, but that is likely because it included non-voters, said veteran Arizona pollster Bruce Merrill, who did not participate in The Republic’s survey. Other polls surveyed only likely voters in Arizona – a narrower pool than all adults – or included adults from across the country.

The Republic’s poll included respondents from a reflective mix of Arizona counties, interviews in Spanish and was weighted to account for the state’s current demographic profile. A quarter of the respondents were Hispanic, in line with estimates of the state population from the Census Bureau. The poll didn’t ask about the legal status of residents here. The poll was conducted between June 30 and July 12 and has a margin of error of 3.89 percentage points.

It suggested that views of SB 1070, which is scheduled to go into effect Thursday, depend heavily on political affiliation, age, income, gender and ethnicity.

Among registered voters, for example, 88 percent of Republicans support the law, compared with 30 percent of Democrats.

For many, the law comes down to perception of crime and what is reasonable.

“If I get picked up, I show ID. I think everybody should have to,” said Janell Harms of Paradise Valley, a supporter of SB 1070.

Harms, 48, operates a small cleaning business and said she knows illegal immigrants have cut into her livelihood. But more than that, she worries that crime follows illegal immigrants. Harms, a non-voter, sees SB 1070 as a first step toward better border security.

Candace Lindsay, a Sun City Democrat, said she supports employment-eligibility checks for everyone but ultimately wants a guest-worker system.

“I think you kind of start over,” she said of the immigration system. She sees SB 1070 as a mistake. “I think it’s kind of unnecessary. People are overreacting,” Lindsay, 63, said.

In April, a Rasmussen Reports poll taken in the days before the final legislation was passed found 70 percent support among 500 Arizona likely voters. Two weeks after Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill into law on April 23, a Pew Research Center poll found that 59 percent of 994 adults nationally supported Arizona’s law and 63 percent favored allowing police to question anyone they suspect as illegal immigrants. In early May, a McClatchy-Ipsos poll found 64 percent of 1,016 registered voters nationally favored Arizona’s law.

The Republic’s poll is similar to a Rocky Mountain Poll in early May that found Arizona residents, not just voters, favored the law 52 percent to 39 percent among 660 polled. That survey also found stronger support among registered voters.

While most support the law, they also don’t see it as a cure for illegal immigration, The Republic poll found. More respondents, 38 percent, think it will have little or no effect on illegal immigration than the 27 percent who think it will largely or completely resolve the issue.

Overwhelmingly, 77 percent of Arizonans think the state and federal governments must work cooperatively to secure the border.

Forty-eight percent of respondents said Latinos are more likely now to be discriminated against than they were six months ago, while 36 percent disagreed. By similar margins, nearly half felt the immigration debate has exposed a deeper racism in the community and that people are more likely to wonder about the legal status of someone who looks Latino. Independent voters narrowly agreed with all those sentiments.

“Whether or not it actually increases racial profiling, the fact that nearly half the people in Arizona worry about it is a pretty enlightened position, as far as I’m concerned,” said Merrill, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University.

Other key poll findings:

• Those with household incomes greater than $50,000 support the law by 2-1 ratios, while those earning less are divided 45 to 44 percent in favor of it.

• Men comfortably support the law, 66 to 28 percent, but women are evenly divided at 44 percent on the issue.

• Hispanics overwhelmingly oppose the law, 76 to 16 percent. Because of the smaller sample size, the margin of error for this group is 7.13 percentage points. Merrill said he doesn’t think answers are skewed by illegal immigrants because they are unlikely to participate in polls anyway.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 7:52 am and is filed under border issues, politics, SB 1070. Tags for this post: public opinion about SB 1070, SB 1070. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.