Journal Poll: New Mexican voters support for border wall rises

New Mexicans’ support for a border wall along the U.S., Mexico border has increased since 2018, a new Journal poll found. The state’s voters are also concerned with border security, with 84% of likely voters surveyed saying the border is a somewhat serious or very serious problem.

“As concern for border security increases, so too did support for the wall,” said Brian Sanderoff, president of Research & Polling Inc., the company that conducted the poll.

Of the likely voters surveyed, 52% support building a border wall and 37% oppose it, with 8% who were undecided or said it depends, and 3% who don’t know or won’t say. Support is significantly higher than the last time the Journal polled this question in 2018, when 37% of voters supported building a border wall and 56% opposed it.

New Mexican voters are also more concerned about border security than they were in 2018.

“I suspect the two correlate, because as people are more likely to consider border security a threat, they are more likely to consider the border wall as part of the border security solution,” Sanderoff said.

In a 2018 poll, 69% of people polled said border security was a very or somewhat serious problem. The new September poll found a 15 percentage point increase, with 84% saying border security was a very or somewhat serious problem. The new poll shows 53% of voters said border security was a very serious problem, 31% said it was a somewhat serious problem, 11% said it was a minor problem and 3% said it was no problem at all. In 2018, 39% said it was a very serious problem and 10% said it was no problem at all.

Partisan divide on a dividing wall

As it has been in the past, support for continuing to build a border wall was still partisan, with a quarter of Democrats, and the vast majority, 91%, of Republicans in support. Independents were evenly split on the issue, with 41% in support, 42% opposed and 14% undecided.

Having a positive opinion of former President Donald Trump correlates strongly with support for continuing to build a border wall. Among voters with a favorable opinion of Trump, 90% support continuing to build the border wall, while the majority of voters with an unfavorable opinion of Trump oppose continuing to build the border wall, with only 23% in that group supportive of continuing to build the wall.

Voters with a favorable opinion of Trump were also more concerned with border security. Seventy-eight percent of voters with a favorable opinion of Trump thought border security was a very serious problem, while 33% of people with an unfavorable opinion of Trump thought it was a serious problem.

Building a border wall and getting Mexico to pay for it was one of the campaign promises that Trump made in his initial run for president in 2016. During his time in office, the U.S. built 80 miles of barriers in new areas along the border and 372 miles of barriers replacing old barriers, according to BBC reporting from 2021. That wall construction was funded in part by diverting billions from the Department of Defense budget.

In the past, Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly criticized the idea of a border wall, including in social media posts and in a 2019 CNN town hall.

Harris criticized Trump in the recent presidential debate for encouraging Republican legislators to vote against a bipartisan border bill, which failed to pass earlier this year. The $118 billion bill would have made significant changes to immigration law and provided $20.2 billion for border security improvements. It also reauthorized an estimated $650 million for border wall construction, Axios reported.

The idea of adding more barriers to the southern border started long before Trump and Harris were political figures with household names. The 2006 Secure Fence Act was promoted by former Republican President George W. Bush and authorized constructing hundreds of miles of new fencing along the border. By the time Trump took office, 650 miles of border barriers already existed.

There is more support for a border wall among people with some college, trade school, or a high school diploma or less education, and less support among voters with college degrees.

Among voters with some college, a high school diploma or less education or who attended trade school, 60% support continuing to build the border wall. Among voters with bachelor’s degrees, support is divided with 43% in favor and 49% opposed, and only 32% of voters with graduate degrees support building the wall.

The educational attainment division on the border wall reflects a larger trend of people with less educational attainment being more conservative, according to Sanderoff.

Regional differences

There are big regional variations in border wall support. Support is strong for a border wall in northwest New Mexico at 61% and very strong within the eastern region of the state, with 71% of voters polled in that region supportive of continuing to build the border wall. In the Albuquerque metro area support is weaker, with 49% of voters in favor and 40% opposed. The north-central region, which includes Santa Fe and Taos and is the most liberal leaning area of the state, is the only region where there is more opposition to the idea than support, with 33% supportive of building the border wall and 50% opposed.

In the Las Cruces and southwest area where three counties are actually on the border with Mexico, there is slightly more support than statewide and slightly more opposition, with fewer voters undecided. Among voters in the southwest region 55% support continuing to build the border wall, 40% are opposed and 5% are undecided.

Poll methodology

The Journal Poll is based on a statewide random sample of 532 voters who cast ballots in the 2020 and/or 2022 general elections, and a sample of adults who registered to vote since December 2022 and who said they are likely to vote in the upcoming election.

The sample was stratified by race and county and weighted by age, education level, and party affiliation based on traditional voting patterns in New Mexico general elections, to ensure a more representative sample.

The poll was conducted from Sept. 6 through Friday, excluding last Tuesday (due to the presidential debate). The voter sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points. The margin of error grows for subsamples.

All interviews were conducted by live, professional interviewers based in Albuquerque, with multiple callbacks to households that did not initially answer the phone.

Both cellphone numbers (88%) and landlines (12%) of likely general election voters were used.