Most Democrats Think Illegal Immigrants Should Vote

Are voters ready to let illegal immigrants vote? A sizable number, including most Democrats, are.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that one-out-of-three Likely U.S. Voters (35%) now believes that illegal immigrants should be allowed to vote if they can prove they live in this country and pay taxes. Sixty percent (60%) disagree, while five percent (5%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Fifty-three percent (53%) of Democrats think tax-paying illegal immigrants should have the right to vote. Twenty-one percent (21%) of Republicans and 30% of voters not affiliated with either major political party agree.

The U.S. Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a case challenging how Texas sets up state legislative districts. Texas currently counts everyone in the state, including illegal immigrants, before carving up districts of proportional population size, but the challenge argues that only eligible voters should be counted because the current system creates some districts with much larger numbers of eligible voters than others.

Sixty-six percent (66%) of voters agree with the legal challenge and say states should only count eligible voters when setting the size of legislative districts for voting purposes. Just 23% favor the current system in Texas that counts all residents including illegal immigrants. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure.

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The survey of 952 Likely Voters was conducted on May 27-28, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of voters think the United States is already more democratic than most other nations, but 17% say it is less democratic. Slightly more (19%) feel America is about equally as democratic as most other nations.

Women are more supportive than men of letting tax-paying illegal immigrants vote, but the two are in general agreement that the size of voting districts should be determined by counting only the number of eligible voters.

Voters under 40 are twice as likely as their elders are to favor allowing illegal immigrants to vote, but they, too, draw the line at counting illegal immigrants when setting up legislative districts.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of Republicans think states should only count eligible voters in setting the size of legislative districts, a view shared by 65% of unaffiliated voters and 52% of Democrats.

Eighty-two percent (82%) of those who oppose letting illegal immigrants vote favor counting only eligible voters when carving up a state into voting districts. Those who favor letting illegal immigrants vote agree but by a much narrower 45% to 39% margin.

Twenty-eight percent (28%) of all voters say it is too easy to vote in America today. Eighteen percent (18%) think it’s too hard to vote, while 49% rate the level of difficulty as about right.

But voters are more confident in the fairness of U.S. elections than they have been in over two years.

Most voters have said consistently for years that gaining control of the border is more important than legalizing the status of undocumented workers already living in the United States.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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