A newly-released survey illustrates just how poorly Americans view the Democratic Party’s job performance on immigration.
Only 19% of likely voters in swing districts across the U.S. approve of Democrats’ handling on immigration, according to a poll released Thursday by Way to Win and Impact Research. Seventy-seven percent of these likely voters disapprove of the party’s handing on immigration, giving Democrats a 58-point net negative rating on the issue.
Way to Win and Impact Research, both of which are Democratic-leaning firms, conducted the survey in order to help the party find the right messaging strategy to chip away at the GOP’s advantage on immigration, according to POLITICO, which first obtained the poll.
Republicans are also underwater on immigration, but to a significantly smaller degree, according to the survey. The GOP has an 11-point negative job rating on the issue, with 43% approving and 54% disapproving of their handling on immigration.
“Democrat support is at rock bottom, and they need to rebuild their trust on this issue,” the authors of the poll concluded. [President Donald Trump’s] overall job rating is negative by a 5-point margin in districts he collectively won by two points, but voters are slightly more favorable on how he’s handled immigration and the policies he and Republicans have enacted.”
“And while Republicans in Congress are underwater by double digits on immigration, they are still in significantly better shape here than Democrats in Congress, whose popularity and trust on immigration are worse by wide margins,” the authors continued.
The poll was conducted from May 6 to 11, and includes a margin-of-error of plus or minus 3.1%.
The survey comes in the wake of President Joe Biden’s tenure over the worst immigration crisis in U.S. history — and Trump’s subsequent efforts to close the border and enforce large-scale deportations.
Illegal immigration into the U.S. exploded under the Biden administration, with fiscal years 2023 and 2024 being the two worst years for total migrant encounters, according to Customs and Border Protection data. The average number of monthly border encounters during the Biden-era nearly reached 160,000 and the daily average peaked at 15,000, according to Department of Homeland Security data.
Over the course of the 46th president’s four years in office, Customs and Border Protection recorded roughly 11 million border encounters — a wave of immigration that severely strained federal and local resources at the time and moved Americans to the right on immigration. Trump won re-election in November while pledging to close the southern border and deport criminal illegal migrants.
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