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SALT LAKE CITY — Mexicans' view of Americans took a steep dip in 2017 but as of 2023 had rebounded, according to a new survey.
Americans' view of Mexicans as of 2024, meantime, is well below where it was in 2017.
The figures, from survey findings released last week by the Pew Research Center, don't offer an explanation for the shift. But the period when Mexicans' view of Americans was at its lowest — 2017, 2018 and 2019 — coincides with the years Donald Trump served as U.S. president. During that time, Trump pushed hard to crack down on illegal immigration, and he remains focused on the issue in his third run for president, this time against Democrat Kamala Harris.
The sharp decline in Americans' view of Mexicans has occurred as the immigration debate, though a focal point of political discussion dating to at least the early 2000s, has seemingly intensified with Trump's emergence front and center on the political scene. Mexico accounts for the largest single bloc of immigrants in the United States of any individual country by a wide margin.
The attitudes "have changed markedly over time," reads the report from Pew, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. "As recently as 2017 — when Donald Trump was the president of the U.S. — only 29% of Mexicans had a favorable opinion of their northern neighbor."
The latest figures, released Aug. 12 and coming from surveys conducted between late February and late April, show that as of 2024, with Joe Biden as president, 61% of Mexicans had a favorable view of Americans. In 2023, also when Biden, a Democrat, was president, 63% of Mexicans had a favorable view of Americans. The figures for 2017, 2018 and 2019, when Trump, a Republican, was chief executive, were 29%, 33% and 35%, respectively. That's down from 66% in 2015, when Barack Obama, a Democrat, was president.
Figures for Americans, which don't cover as many years, show that 53% had a favorable view of Mexicans in 2010, with the figure rising to 65% in 2017 and falling to 37% as of 2024.
Younger people from each country generally have a more positive view of those from the other nation than older people.
"For example, 71% of Mexican adults under 30 have a positive view of the U.S., compared with only half of Mexicans ages 65 and older," Pew said. "Around half of U.S. adults under 30 (48%) have a favorable view of Mexico, compared with just 25% of those ages 65 and older."
Likewise, there was a divide based on party affiliation, with the figures down both for Democrats and Republicans. As of 2024, 52% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents had a favorable view of Mexico, down from 79% in 2017. The figures for Republicans and those leaning Republican were 22% for 2024 and 49% for 2017.
"When we first asked this question in 2007, Democrats and Republicans were about equally favorable toward the country (49% and 45%, respectively)," Pew said.
According to the 2024 numbers, 83% of Americans say the U.S. government is doing a bad or very bad job handling migrants at the border compared to 52% of Mexicans.
Under Obama's presidency, the share of Mexicans expressing confidence in the U.S. president ranged from 40% to 55%. That figure ranged from 5% to 8% under Trump and 36% as of 2024 under Biden.
