Nearly half of all Americans are against President Obama’s soon-to-be-released plan to unilaterally protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
A NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday found that 48 percent oppose Obama taking executive action on immigration policy, compared with 38 percent who support the plan. The remaining 14 percent of respondents said they had no opinion or were unsure of the president’s action.
Obama is expected to announce his immigration plan on Friday at a school in Las Vegas.
The survey found that 63 percent of Democrats approve of the president taking executive action, versus 11 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of independents.
The president is expected to grant as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants reprieves from deportation and issue work permits for many of them.
Republicans contend that Obama is misreading the message from a humbling defeat for his party in the 2014 midterms.
With just two years left in office, though, the president has calculated that he can’t wait for Republicans to pursue their own legislative reforms. And Democrats believe such action will bolster their standing with the Hispanic community.
According to the poll, 43 percent of Latinos support the president’s action and 37 percent oppose it, with the rest remaining undecided. However, the sample size was just 110 Latinos, giving the findings a margin of error of plus-minus 9 percentage points.
The NBC/WSJ poll was taken between Nov. 14-17 and has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.
