(The Center Square) – An overwhelming number of Arizonans support greater security at the southern border, according to recent polling done by Noble Predictive Insights.
With the presidential election coming up in November, Arizonans will not only have the chance to vote for their local legislators, but to vote in laws proposed on the ballot – one of those being a measure that would increase criminal prosecution of non-U.S. citizens.
The measure, Prop. 314, would make it a crime for non-citizens to use false information in applications for public benefits and employment, to enter Arizona between ports of entry, to refuse to comply with orders to return to their home country. It also would increase penalties for the selling of fentanyl that causes the death of an individual, raising it to a class 2 felony.
The NPI report, surveying 1,003 voters between Aug. 12-16 with a 3.09% margin of error, indicates that 63% of Arizona voters would support Prop. 314. The highest support comes from Republicans (77%), but is also backed by liberal groups including college graduates (58%), Hispanics (56%), Democrats (23%) and 18-to-34-year-olds (52%).
While Democrats typically have a different approach when it comes to addressing the border crisis, with Gov. Katie Hobbs focusing on support to border communities and expanding services in the area, only 23% of Democrats polled said they were against the measure.
“There’s a couple reasons for this. One is that voters are reacting to what they see in the news. For some time now, voters have seen pretty bad news coming from the southern border,” said David Byler, NPI chief of research, noting that some Democratic voters tend to have more conservative views than the Democratic party when it comes to immigration. “They think generally, if you poll them, that the situation there is not under control, people are worried about safety and security and the United States government’s level of [being able to] get control of the situation. So, what you see here is strength for a law and order position.”
Byler also said that when it comes to ballot propositions, voters do not always vote in line with their party affiliation.
According to the report, the most strongly backed components of the measure that Arizonans support include prosecuting drug dealers who sell fentanyl to an individual who dies from an overdose, with 77% support, and requiring employers to verify immigration status of workers, with 75% support. Support on reforms around immigrants obtaining public benefits is less with only 56% supporting.
“Opponents will have trouble pushing the argument ‘people are only supporting this because of the fentanyl stuff, they don’t care about the immigration’ – that’s what voters like most about Prop 314,” said Mike Noble, NPI Founder and CEO. “Prop 314 is popular across party lines, and that is a difficult trend to disrupt with only a couple of months until Election Day.”
There will be a total of 13 propositions on the November ballot that Arizonans will have an opportunity to vote on. An in-depth look at all 13 measures can be found here.
