Conventional wisdom holds that voters, especially Republican voters, are relentlessly hardline when it comes to immigration policy and reform. Polls that present false choices over immigration—asking whether the government should focus on enforcing immigration laws OR legalizing undocumented immigrants who meet certain criteria—only serve to confirm that flawed analysis.

By consistently strong majorities, Americans support comprehensive immigration reform. Conventional wisdom has held that voters oppose this type of reform, but a look at opinion polls from 2008 to today proves that conventional wisdom is wrong.

For years, anti-immigrant activists have scared Republican officials into thinking that GOP voters are rabidly anti-immigrant and oppose any candidate who supports common sense reform. The recent ascent of Newt Gingrich, who has weathered attacks from enforcement-only candidate Mitt Romney over his immigration position, demonstrates conclusively that this line of thinking is wrong.

Polling released from Latino Decisions and impreMedia shows that Latino voters prioritize immigration, and do so because they view the issue through a personal lens. The findings hold important lessons for both political parties as the 2012 cycle begins.

In May 2011, Pew Research Center released a poll, “Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology.” The new study is based on two surveys with a combined sample of 3,029 adults, conducted Feb. 22-Mar. 14, 2011 and a smaller callback survey conducted April 7-10, 2011 with 1,432 of the same respondents.

Latino Decisions surveyed 500 registered voters between January 24th and February 5th in 21 states with the largest Hispanic populations, comprising 94% percent of the US Hispanic electorate. Voters were selected randomly from the registered voter lists and households were identified for contact using the Census Bureau Hispanic surname list, and merged with third party data to secure telephone numbers. Results were weighted to account for minor deviations from known population characteristics.

In November 2010, Latino Decisions conducted an election-eve poll of Latino voters in eight states, including Florida. The poll was conducted from October 28th-November 1st with 400 “extremely likely” registered voters in Florida; the margin of error is 4.2%.

While much post-election analysis has highlighted how Latino voters were mobilized by the immigration debate and helped Democrats retain the Senate, new polling from Lake Research Partners focuses on the views of all voters toward immigration policy. The research finds that despite midterm election gains by conservatives and Republicans, voters have not turned against comprehensive immigration reform and remain broadly in favor of a national and practical fix to the immigration system. The poll was conducted between October 31st and November 2, 2010 and the survey reached a total of 1,200 likely, registered voters nationwide.