It's complicated.
How ‘poll-washing’ lends Trump false legitimacy
Too often, polls are treated as “revealing” popular support for something the survey-takers don’t fully understand.
"Trump and his allies have described their intentions toward immigrants in openly fascist terms. Trump has said that immigrants are “
poisoning the blood of our country” and that “
getting them out will be a bloody story.” He has promised to use the military to round up millions of immigrants —
including people here legally — into
mass detention camps and deport them, causing unthinkable social and economic chaos. Yet for months, we’ve seen headlines claiming that most Americans, including a substantial portion or even a majority of Latinos, support mass deportations.
These headlines are the result of what I call “poll-washing” — using surveys to “reveal” popular support for something the survey-takers don’t fully understand.
There is abundant evidence, often in the same surveys, that people support the abstract idea of “mass deportation,” yet oppose the particulars of what Trump’s planned mass deportation would actually entail. But we don’t hear anything about this contradiction. And that silence risks lending Trump’s plans false legitimacy.
For instance, 54% of voters in a September
Scripps/Ipsos poll said they support “the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.” but a much larger share (68%) said they support a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, who would face deportation under Trump’s plans. In an October
New York Times/Siena poll, 45% of Hispanic voters said they support “Deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally back to their home countries” — yet 67% said they support “Providing a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States."
Too often, polls are treated as “revealing” popular support for something the survey-takers don’t fully understand.
www.msnbc.com