In a troubling sign for Republicans in the upcoming midterms, Orange County voters are souring on President Trump and particularly his crackdown on illegal immigration.
A new poll released by UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology shows support for Trump among Orange County voters is down to 35%, with 65% of participants saying they do not approve of the president’s performance. His hard-line immigration policies have proven to be particularly unpopular, with six in 10 residents disapproving of his actions, according to the survey, a stark contrast to the county’s historical stance on the issue.
And, experts say, the poll results in this county — largely seen as a bellwether in recent years — might not bode well for Republicans who are already facing an uphill battle heading into the November midterms where voters, in general, tend to favor the party that’s not in power.
While Democrats have carried the county in recent presidential elections, Orange County remains a decidedly purple area and home to some of the most contested congressional districts in recent years.
Those contests were expected to be less competitive this year after California voters approved Democratic-backed redistricting that was expected to turn several seats blue.
“Trump is taking action and Republicans in Congress aren’t standing up to it,” said Matt Lesenyie, an assistant professor of political science at Cal State Long Beach. “I think it’s actually a lot easier to say Republicans are clearly in control of the entirety of Congress and the presidency, and so if I don’t like something the party is to blame.”
The way the administration has carried out immigration enforcement and deportations is deeply unpopular among Orange County voters, many of whom are immigrants themselves or have family members who were born elsewhere.
More than 70% of poll respondents said they oppose conducting immigration enforcement at schools and hospitals and roughly 63% oppose using the U.S. military to assist with deportations. About 64% of survey respondents oppose ending birthright citizenship, and a majority are against expanding the border wall.
Two policies stand out as exceptions, with 81% of respondents in favor of cracking down on human traffickers and 61% supporting the government limiting immigration from countries it deems dangerous.
The poll also showed a majority of respondents support a path to legal status over deportation for undocumented immigrants. That sentiment is strongest among Democrats at 88% and independents at 71%. At the same time, 54% of Republicans who responded to the poll favor deportation, according to the poll.
Jon Gould, dean of UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology, said the level of disapproval for Trump is striking given Orange County’s generally close political divide.
“This purple county does seem to have broad agreement that immigration is much more beneficial than it’s not, and that people don’t want harsh enforcement, but they want some enforcement,” he said.
Gould said he expected the views on immigration to skew a bit more toward support for enforcement, given that it’s been roughly nine months since the height of detentions last summer. But the results point to a large number of young people who are supportive of immigrants and simmering anger over the way the administration has carried out deportations.
Orange County has become more culturally diverse in recent decades with Asian Americans making up 24% of the population and Latinos making up roughly 34%. About 30% of county residents were born outside the United States, according to census data.
Notably, independent voters’ views on immigration are skewing more in line with Democrats’, according to the poll.
“It may be here that Trump’s really harsh enforcement actions have turned people off and they’re not going back,” Gould said. “It certainly seems that the really strict, some would say incredibly harsh, policies have changed people.”
Voters’ position on immigration is a far cry from the county’s historical views on the topic.
In 1986, amid a massive crackdown on immigration, Orange County residents showed up at 6 a.m. on East Chapman Avenue in Orange to cheer on agents as they rounded up more than 100 undocumented people looking for work. They waved signs bearing the message: “Don’t Let the USA Become a Third World Nation.”
Later, the county was largely supportive of Prop. 187 — the so-called “Save our State” initiative — that sought to deny nearly every state social service to those not in the country legally. That measure, which passed in 1994, never went into effect and ushered in a series of major losses for the GOP in California.
Now, middle-class Asian Americans, Latinos and other voters, who may have initially supported Trump’s campaign messaging on targeting immigrants who committed crimes, have expressed frustration with how the raids have been carried out.
“Some folks are saying ‘I like the idea of going after criminals, but I don’t like the school raids and targeting grandmothers. It doesn’t look like you’re picking up who you said you were going to pick up in the campaign,’” Lesenyie said. “They’re absolutely a swing opportunity and there’s a lot of them in Orange County.”
For Sandra De Anda, the network coordinator for Orange County Rapid Response Network, which connects immigrants to legal help and runs a hotline to report ICE sightings, the poll results are a source of pride.
It’s something that she’d long hoped would be the case growing up in Santa Ana in the 1990s in a historically Latino and Cambodian neighborhood where immigration agents frequently targeted residents.
“It’s great to see the support of our immigrant and refugee communities. It’s just been really amazing to see how Orange County has transformed over the last decade,” she said, adding that she sees the job as just getting started.
“Right now is the moment to do a lot of the movement work, a lot of the policymaking, because those polices are going to last far beyond Trump,” she said.
