Between October 15 and 26, 2025, the Manhattan Institute surveyed 2295 Republicans and/or 2024 Trump voters (aka the “GOP coalition”), plus an additional 500 registered voters. The sample was reached primarily via online panel interviews.

Gallup and Pew Research also conducted 2025 surveys that included questions on immigrants and immigration. This post will compare Republican responses in those surveys with what the Manhattan Institute found for the GOP coalition. I’ll start with a couple charts summarizing immigration-related responses in the Manhattan Institute survey:

That 37% for deportations “by whatever methods are necessary” is troubling, especially since the respondents were given the opportunity to endorse the “due process” option. However, it doesn’t look like the Manhattan Institute respondents were anti-immigrant in general, as a large majority thought high-skilled legal immigration should either increase or stay at its already high level:

And now the Gallup findings:

Unfortunately, Gallup doesn’t distinguish legal from illegal immigrants in many of its survey items, so it’s hard to interpret some responses. Yes, almost half the Gallup respondents thought immigration to the U.S. should decrease. But most also thought immigration was generally a good thing. Are these respondents thinking of the same groups of immigrants? Who knows? Shame on Gallup for sloppy survey wording.

Now let’s look at what Pew found:

The Pew survey isn’t all that informative, because we simply have no idea what the respondents are thinking of when they endorse survey options. For example, when a person endorses “All illegals should be deported”, did they give any thought to the children? That’s important, because the Deport All response implies no exceptions, but as we saw in the Gallup survey most Republicans wanted all illegal immigrants deported yet when asked specifically about those brought over as children, almost three-quarters thought these kids should have a path to citizenship.

As they say: details matter.

Links:

Growing shares say the Trump administration is doing ‘too much’ to deport immigrants in the U.S. illegally, by Hannah Hartig / Pew Research Center. December 15, 2025 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/12/15/growing-shares-say-the-trump-administration-is-doing-too-much-to-deport-immigrants-in-the-us-illegally/     

Surge in U.S. Concern About Immigration Has Abated, by Lydia Saad / Gallup. July 11, 2025 https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigration-abated.aspx   

The New GOP Survey Analysis of Americans Overall, Today’s Republican Coalition, and the Minorities of MAGA.  Poll by Jesse Arm, Matthew Knee / The Manhattan Institute. December 1, 2025 https://manhattan.institute/article/the-new-gop-survey-analysis-of-americans-overall-todays-republican-coalition-and-the-minorities-of-maga