How do you defend a state law that the President of the United States
calls "misguided"? Simple, you start naming all of the people and groups
that allegedly support it. That's what the conservative TV host Glenn
Beck did when he claimed that 64 percent of Americans support the controversial Arizona immigration bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law in April of this year. It's also what Brewer did when she cited the support for the legislation among Arizona's law enforcement.
It was only a matter of time before the author of the bill, Arizona
state senator Russell Pearce, joined the chorus. Talking about the bill
on CNN, Russell said that "This is the most popular bill in America.
America supports it, overwhelmingly they support it, yet every time
folks get on the air, they talk about the Arizona controversial law.
Controversy with whom, lawbreakers versus law keepers?"
To prove his point, he threw in an eye-catching statistic. "Sixty percent of the Hispanics support it in Arizona."
The number seemed high based on the media reports that we've seen, so we decided to investigate.
We found several polls that measured support for the law among
Hispanics, both at the state and national level. Here is a quick
summary:
*A national poll conducted by Univision, a Spanish-language television
network, in May found that 67 percent of Hispanics oppose the law.
*A May poll released by the Wall Street Journal/NBC showed that 70
percent of Hispanics on the national level are either strongly or
somewhat opposed to the measure.
*A national poll released in June by the Quinnipac University found
that 54 percent of Hispanics disapprove of Arizona's immigration law.
Most importantly, a study commissioned by the National Council of La
Raza along with the Service Employees International Union in May looked
at support for the law among registered Hispanic voters in the state of
Arizona. It found that 81 percent either strongly or somewhat oppose the
law. Only four percent somewhat support it and 12 percent strongly
support it.
We checked with polling experts to see if we had missed something.
"The La Raza poll is probably the best poll available for gauging
Hispanic attitudes" toward the immigration law, said Fred Solop, a
Northern Arizona University polling expert. "This poll was run by social
scientists, includes an ample sample of Hispanics in the state, and
approached the issues somewhat more complexly than other polls."
A representative from Pearce's office told us that he was referring to a
Rasmussen poll but didn't supply us with more details. So we went
digging.
In the end, we decided that a possible source of the claim was a poll
published on April 21, 2010. That survey looked at attitudes among
likely Arizona voters, and found that 70 percent favor the legislation.
Broken down by race, the approval rate was 73 percent among white
voters, 50 percent among African American voters, and 63 percent among
"other". It seems like Pearce took the 63 percent "other" figure and
re-labeled it Hispanic.
Our polling experts told us that there are numerous problems with that
approach. To begin, the "other" category also includes groups like
native Americans, not just Hispanics. Moreover, there are some Hispanics
who self-define themselves as white, so there could "very well be
overlaps between the White and Other," said Solop. Finally, because the
poll only looked at likely voters, by the time you get down to how many
actual Hispanics were interviewed, you are dealing with a very small
sample size, which means that you are at a risk of incurring large
margin of error.
To be thorough, we got in touch with Scott Rasmussen himself. His
office sent us a statement saying that "it would be inappropriate to use
our data to state that Hispanic and Latino voters favor the Arizona
law." Well, there you have it: Pearce's own source telling us his data
was used inaccurately.
To recap. Russell Pearce claimed that sixty percent of Hispanics
support the Arizona immigration law. During our research, however, we
found three national polls and one Arizona-specific poll that showed the
exact opposite. On the national level, anywhere from 54 to 70 percent
have either a strongly or somewhat unfavorable view of the legislation.
On the state level, 70 percent strongly disagree with the law and 11
percent somewhat disagree. What's even more disqualifying, however, is
Pearce's misuse of the poll on which he apparently based his claim. The
very source that he quoted told us that it's inaccurate to equate the
"other" category with "Hispanics", a point of view that we also
confirmed with several other polling experts. Pearce earns himself a
Pants on Fire.
