Do Britons want less immigration?
Public opinion is more mixed than many people realise.
Written by Noah Carl.
My previous piece argued that protests and rioting in Britain do not show “the English” have “had enough” of immigration – contrary to what many on the right have been claiming. In response, several people posted the chart below, which plots YouGov’s measure of opposition to immigration from 2019 to 2024. The specific question asked is, “Generally speaking, do you think the level of immigration into Britain over the last ten years has been too high, too low or about right?” As you can see, a large majority of respondents (66% in the latest survey) say that immigration has been “too high”.
The argument of the people who posted the chart was something like: "whatever else may be true, there is clearly an overwhelming consensus for less immigration into Britain”. Note: I had acknowledged in the article that “polling suggests most Britons do want immigration reduced”. My claim was that since they had voted overwhelmingly for pro-migration parties at the recent election, they must care more about issues like the cost of living, housing and the NHS. I’d also noted that the polling data are more complicated than many conservatives realise.
So what do the polling data show about attitudes to immigration in Britain?
The first conclusion that can be drawn is that the level of opposition depends on exactly which question is asked. After all, there are different ways to get at people’s views on immigration. The chart below plots five different measures of opposition, not including the YouGov one. (The wording of each question is given here.) As you can see, these measures suggest that only about half of Britons are opposed to immigration, rather than two thirds.1 The measure from the European Social Survey suggests an even lower figure, but it asks specifically about people of a different race.
The measure from the British Election Study is particularly interesting since it goes all the way back to the 1960s. (Unlike some of the others, including the YouGov one, it’s based on rigorous sampling methods and face-to-face interviews. Hence it is likely to be more accurate.) In the 1960s and 1970s – around the time of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech – there actually was an overwhelming consensus against immigration, with more than 80% of respondents saying that “too many immigrants have been let into this country”. Yet as of 2019, only 52% of respondents said the same thing.
In addition to overall opposition, one can also ask about opposition to specific categories of immigration. When Rob Ford and his colleagues did this back in January/February, they found that respondents wanted most categories of immigration to increase or stay the same. As shown below, the only categories for which a majority wanted a reduction were “people crossing the Channel in small boats” and “dependents of students”. Incidentally, the poll also asked about overall opposition and obtained a figure of 54% (consistent with the chart above).
The second conclusion that can be drawn is that attitudes to immigration have become more favourable since the early 2010s. This is true for various different measures. Between the early 2010s and the early 2020s, Britons not only became less likely to oppose immigration itself, but more likely to say immigrants make a positive contribution to culture and the economy. They also became much less likely to say that employers should give priority to natives over immigrants – as shown below. Interestingly, this was a period effect more than a cohort effect: multiple cohorts simultaneously shifted their views.
The third conclusion that can be drawn is that only a subset of those who oppose immigration consider it an important issue. In the latest data from YouGov, immigration was the most important issue for Conservative and Reform voters, but only the fourth most important for Labour voters and only the fifth most important for Lib Dem voters. This is despite the fact that these data were collected immediately after the riots. As media attention on the riots subsides, the issue’s salience may regress to its former average. (After all, Britain has a lot of other problems.) At the start of the year, immigration wasn’t even in the top five issues for Labour voters.
Perusing Twitter/X, I get the impression that many on the right assume public attitudes to immigration are still roughly where they were in the 1960s and 1970s, when at least three quarters of the population wanted immigration reduced. But this isn’t the world we live in. The current level of opposition is somewhere between half and two thirds of the population – more likely at the lower end of that range.2 Anti-immigration sentiment may rise in the coming weeks, but it’s unclear how long any bump will last. What’s more, at least half the population doesn’t consider it a particularly important issue. Hence the share of people who are both against immigration and consider it one of the most important issues is probably less than half. (It’s the half that isn’t represented in government, of course.)
I’m afraid there’s more bad news for restrictionists: younger Britons are more favourable to immigration than older ones.3 According to data gathered by the Oxford Migration Observatory, only 37% of people aged 18–24 think the number of immigrants coming to Britain should be reduced “a little” or “a lot”, as compared to 68% of people aged 65+. Younger Britons are also less likely to consider immigration an important issue.
Age differences in attitudes to immigration are reflected in voting patterns. At the last election, people younger than 60 voted overwhelmingly for left-wing or progressive parties. Eye-balling the chart below, the Conservatives and Reform won less than 35% of this age-group – with the other 65% voting Labour, Lib Dem or Green. Indeed, a recent analysis by The Times determined that one in six Tory voters are likely to die before the next election.
But younger Britons will surely get more conservative as they age, thereby replenishing the ranks of older Tory voters? There’s reason to believe they won’t. An analysis by the Financial Times found that millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) have been getting less conservative as they’ve aged, unlike previous cohorts. (Gen Z isn’t old enough yet for us to know whether they’re on the same trajectory.) So if millennials don’t reverse course and nothing else changes, it’s going to be hard for right-wing parties to win elections in Britain.
Many conservatives seem to have a distorted understanding of immigration attitudes, mistakenly believing that the vast majority of Britons want immigration reduced. The truth is: opposition varies depending on which question you ask (and could be as low as 50%); attitudes have become more favourable since 2010; and not everyone who’s against immigration considers it an important issue. Finally, young people have more cosmopolitan views and are getting less conservative as they age. Unless this trend is somehow arrested, restrictionists are in big trouble.
Noah Carl is Editor at Aporia.
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This will slightly understate opposition if “don’t knows” are included.
You can argue that opposition would be higher if people were better informed about the scale of immigration and all of its downstream consequences, but that doesn’t change the facts on the ground.
Do the immigrants and their descendants favour more immigration? That would make sense and skew the numbers.
Voters are just misinformed. The average person massively underestimates the numbers coming in and overestimates the benefits. Go read "What voters really think about immigration" from Onward.