New poll results show declining support for globalization and immigration among American adults (Americans' Anti-Global Turn May Stir Race for President, Gregg Hitt, Wall Street Journal, Dec 20; Survey results report).
Democrats tended to be relatively more skeptical of liberal trade, Republicans of liberal immigration.
In a poll conducted for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal from Dec 14 to 17, a sample of U.S. adults 18 and up were asked:
Do you think the fact that the American economy has become increasingly global is good because it has opened up new markets for American products and resulted in more jobs, or bad because it has subjected American companies and employees to unfair competition and cheap labor?
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of the respondents said it had been bad, 28% good, and 11% about equally good and bad. In June 1997, 42% felt it was good and 48% bad.
Gregg Hitt's story in the Journal provides a little more detail than there is in the online version of the survey report:
Blue and white-collar workers were strongly opposed, as were professionals and managers, who by a 50%-37% margin said globalization has been bad for the U.S. Among Republicans, 55% said globalization has been bad for the U.S.; 63% of Democrats agreed.
The survey also asked,
Would you say that immigration helps the United States more than it hurts it, OR immigration hurts the United States more than it helps it?
Thirty-nine percent (39%) felt it helped more than it hurt, and 52% felt it hurt more than it helped.
Support for immigration has dropped off since this past June, when 46% felt it helped more than it hurt and only 44% felt otherwise. In fact, the December results represent a falling off in support from most of 2006 and 2007; during that period the percentage thinking it helped ranged from 44% to 46% in four polls.
The December '07 results are very similar to those from December 2005 so we're back where we were two years ago.
Again, Hitt has a little more detail:
Immigration is often a bellwether of public sentiment on global engagement, and concern can be seen across parties and incomes. Clear majorities of blue- and white-collar workers said immigration hurts the nation more than it helps. Only those identified as professionals and managers approved, by a 52% to 41% ratio. Republicans overwhelmingly voiced concerns with immigration, mirroring the presidential primary candidates, but Democrats, too, expressed similar feelings, albeit to a lesser extent....
Democrats, by and large, have remained sympathetic to immigrant concerns, trying to balance the party's outreach to Hispanics with the rising anti-immigrant sentiment among working-class voters and the union base. At the same time, they have moved away from the party's Clinton-era support for free trade and are voicing skepticism.
The poll was done by the pollsters Peter Hart and Bill McInturff. These two questions were tagged on the end of a survey mainly devoted to assessing the relative support for the different Presidential candidates.
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