YouGov has released detailed polling on attitudes to immigration that shows a clear link between having hardline anti-immigrant views and being ignorant about the level of illegal immigration into the UK.

It is well known that many people massively over-estimate the extent to which irregular migration contributes to the overall net migration figures, which reached a record high of 900,000 in the year ending June 2023.

The confusion is partly explained by the huge media and political attention given to people arriving illegal in the UK on small boats. But the annual small boat arrival figure has never been higher than the 46,000 total it reached in 2022 – although it is on course to pass that this year.

The YouGov polling suggests that, while cutting migration numbers signifcantly but still allowing some migrants into the country is the policy with most support (very broadly, this is also what Labour and the Tories advocate), almost half of voters either strongly (26%) or somewhat (19%) support “admitting no more new migrants and requiring large numbers of migrants who came to the UK in recent years to leave”.