Majority of Americans Support Citizenship Question on Census

Even though U.S. President Donald Trump’s fight to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 U.S. census seems almost lost, a majority of Americans support asking census survey respondents about their nationality.

In a Hill-HarrisX poll, 60 percent of registered voters said they would choose to have such a question featured on the upcoming census. Amongst Republicans, this desire was even more pronounced, with 81 percent saying they were for including the question, even if it meant that less people would willingly participate in the census.

The citizenship question was removed after the 1950 census. While many countries do ask the question on their census, U.S. officials have raised concerns about inaccurate results of a census with the question, assuming that many people living in the U.S. would refrain from taking part in the survey altogether for fear their legal status would be revealed.