So, I get that Harris is trying to outflank Trump on undocumented immigration, but are the Democrats going to join the Republicans in being demagogic about immigration from now on, becoming part of the problem and keeping undocumented immigrants an underclass whose rights as workers can be violated with impunity w…
So, I get that Harris is trying to outflank Trump on undocumented immigration, but are the Democrats going to join the Republicans in being demagogic about immigration from now on, becoming part of the problem and keeping undocumented immigrants an underclass whose rights as workers can be violated with impunity while employers use them to undercut legal labor and the U.S. shuts itself off to refugees running for their lives because their arrival, like that of refugees from the Nazis in their day, is inconvenient, or will she pander amorally only for the duration of the campaign and then disappoint those many or few people who were sold on her expediently momentary hard line? Is immigration reform now a completely dead idea because the Democrats have concluded that it's politically inconvenient and they can successfully appeal to people who hate immigrants and immigration? And just how many people who would have otherwise voted against them are really going to be sold on this new-found hard line by the Democrats against the huddled masses yearning to breathe free?
Yeah, that certainly is reasonable, but I didn't like the bill Trump killed, and considering that economists figured out that it was only due to immigration, including illegal immigration, that the U.S. economy bounced back from the Covid doldrums, shutting ourselves off from asylum-seekers is definitely not a wise policy.
However, there should be an ongoing effort to ensure countries where asylum-seekers are coming from can get better economies. The U.S. doesn’t always have to be the only place where employment opportunities should be.
Of course, there would have to be trade-offs with certain countries depending on what their economies are like. This would be more of an ongoing foreign policy affair.
Last time I checked only about 10% of those who’ve left Venezuela ended up in the U.S. a far smaller percentage of refugees from Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan are here. It’s not close to being the case that the US is the only country taking refugees/asylees, despite being a leading cause of why folks are leaving their homes.
Also Cuba although I don’t see migrants to represent a substantial portion of those coming in the US.
That said, if there’s an opportunity to build strong relations with a country where migrants are coming from it’s Cuba. President Miguel Diaz-Canel has expressed openness for continuing relations with the US although during the Trump and Biden Administration they have taken a back burner.
The fact that Harris went to the border on a late September campaign stop tells me she continues to feel highly vulnerable on this issue. If it was really only the "fifth most important issue to voters" as some around here have said, she wouldn't be making a point of drawing attention to it in a swing state this late in the campaign.
Could Biden have put a lid on the gaming of the asylum process earlier than the fourth year of his Presidency? That's the underlying question here that shapes this debate and why the border issue is such a profound vulnerability. Democrats raised their hands in support of decriminalizing border crossings in 2019 and 2020, and because the "asylum" loophole was allowed to be manipulated for millions of border crossings for so long before Biden finally dropped a executive order with some teeth in the months before the election, voters can be forgiven if they believe that decriminalized border crossings are exactly what we got. A more perfect road map to tap the vein of MAGA fury could not possibly have been paved.
But one thing is absolutely for sure......any political will for good-faith comprehensive immigration reform legislation that significantly expands the number of legal immigrants granted visas has been crushed for the foreseeable future in the deference to accommodating so many people allowed to cross the border illegally. Those who've defended the manipulation of the asylum process for so long have only succeeded in setting back the political clock on the immigration reform debate decades.
There's a middle ground between being "anti-immigration" and signalling stronger enforcement of border crossings. I'm pretty confident that a sizable share of immigration-senstitive voters would reward a political leader who could clearly articulate that they recognize the difference.
The other thing is that there is a segment of progressives who wants no immigration enforcement at all or complete open borders. If you don’t agree with that 100%, you’re automatically a “racist”.
Must like many other right-wing straw men, I'm sure these kinds of people exist and are incredibly obnoxious and also incredibly online, but this is not a large or even viable constituency in the party. To put it in context, literal Nazi sympathizers and self-identified Nazis are a larger and more influential constituency in the Republican party than these far-left college activists are in Democratic politics.
I know people who are in the zero enforcement camp, and not just online. (Some of my acquaintances regularly go to rallies and vigils outside a Boston jail where migrants are detained.) But I agree that outside of the progressive / leftist bubble they carry very little weight.
She and Biden had me convinced they, like Obama and Hillary, were more than willing to throw human rights out with the bathwater when it comes to pandering to xenophobia on border issues. Better than Trump, but no wonder so many Latinos are disillusioned with Dems and registering independent.
If you support 3 year olds representing themselves in immigration proceedings, as was official policy defended in court by the Obama administration, you’ll be the first Hispanic Democrat I’ve talked to who did.
I do think Harris made the conscious decision to spend this week addressing her "less popular" issues - economy and immigration. She's tackling perceived weaknesses directly rather than ignoring them, figuring the benefit outweighs the danger of making those issues more salient.
Am I sure it's the right choice? No, I'm not sure. If I had to guess, I'd say it's wise, but I don't know.
So that “someone” who claimed it was the 5th most important issue was me, and I provided polling to back up that assertion in response to your claim that a plurality of voters considered it the key issue. I’m still waiting for you to provide a link to the poll where that result was obtained.
What the evidence seems to show, is that Republicans care far more about immigration than anyone else does. It consistently ranks as the #2 issue for Republicans. Could it rank higher for potential voters in some swing states (AZ, NV) and TX where the Senate seat seems to be in play? Sure, and if you have any polling on that (or again, any polling that supports your position at all) I’d be happy to see it and take it into consideration. I’m starting to think you don’t actually have any though.
None have come up in a cursory scan of polls. Most polls seem to be asking "is this issue important to you?" and then ticking off a bunch of issues with responses to "very important" to "not very important". Not many polls are outright asking voters what their #1 issue is. The exit polls will and I'll stand by my prediction from late last year that "immigration and the border" will top the list. I could be wrong and either the economy or reproductive rights rank higher, but I can predict with high confidence that immigration and the border will rank higher than 11% on voters' top issues.
Considering most elections in Europe in the last few years has turned on immigration, it's pretty tone-deaf to think the laws of gravity won't apply here, especially now that the unwritten "I won't talk about immigration if you won't" truce ended among Presidential nominees after the Obama years. The yawning class divide over this issue makes it easy for the college boys in the media and in election analysis community to fail to notice how salient the issue is outside their upscale suburban cul-de-sacs. We'll know in a little over a month who was right I guess.
If you're right that that's the #1 issue, it's not going to be by people who want fewer hassles at the border, and Trump will win by a considerable margin. I think it's extremely unlikely to be the #1 issue.
There are literally two polls in my comment above that ask “what is the most important issue to you” so they’re not that hard to find. No idea on how good the pollsters are but they’re out there. I think the polls that ask about relative importance would actually support your theory better since it would allow someone to say both the economy and immigration are important to them.
Regarding Europe, I’m not sure it’s an apples to apples comparison. You’ve got the Scandis, where yes, from what I’ve read immigration is a big issue. But those are very white countries. I would expect the fear of people of color to be greater than that in heterogeneous societies. And LePen keeps getting closer and closer in France. But, well, France… Additionally, the aftereffects of colonization are much more recent there, so the dynamic is probably different. Issue polls for the EU are even harder to find than for the US though, so if you have any links to them would be happy to review them.
I am going to agree with you on one thing though, and this goes against my assumptions, but immigration probably will rank higher than health care / abortion in the exit polls. I do think though, that how many people base their vote on each issue is still up for debate.
Look mate, I’m really not trying to be a dick here. But one of the main reasons I started posting on DKE was because people were just throwing out random opinions and stating them as fact. While I disagree with it, I have no problem with your theory that immigration is the key issue, it’s a legitimate hypothesis. The reason I keep pushing back is because you have constantly claimed that you have facts to back your opinion up but those facts have never materialized. I try to be very clear in what I conclude from evidence vs what is my gut instinct, if you did the same I wouldn’t be nearly so argumentative.
And to clarify, there were actually polls showing immigration as the #1 issue, but they were from before the Democratic nominee swap and thus obsolete.
Thanks for that. If you dig into the actual poll responses https://news.gallup.com/file/poll/611138/240226MIPEcon.pdf economic issues still top Immigration 30-28. It’s just that only 12% of folks said Economy in General while the other 18% cited something more specific. When you break it down by party, the percentage responses for Economic Issues, Economy In General, Immigration are:
Rep: 29-11-57
Ind: 34-13-22
Dem: 27-12-10
So as with all the other polls I’ve seen, it’s largely something Republicans care about. Less than 1 in 4 Independents cite it as their primary concern. As mentioned above, I’m surprised to see health care / abortion listed so low.
It seems Gallup used some selective data points in order to claim that Immigration is the #1 issue.
Since it’s a monthly poll we have more recent data to look at as well, https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx. From Feb to Sep, the economy in general has gone from 12% to 24%, economic issues as a whole from 30 to 44% and Immigration from 28 to 22%.
My theory, which the data seems to support, is that except for the hardcore Republicans, most people don’t care that much about immigration, except when they’re told to. Was there anything going on in February 2024 which may have caused increase interest in immigration? I had to look up the timing of it but yup, that’s when the Immigration Bill was in the news. If you look at the trend lines in the first link the number of people who named immigration as their #1 issue tripled between Aug 2023 and Feb 2024. I suspect there was a corresponding increase in news coverage about it as well.
Similarly, since the breakdown of the Immigration bill, there has been a mostly steady decrease, with a recent uptick in September, which I would guess is due to the latest racist crap being pushed by the Republican Party.
Which leads me to my final conclusion as to why immigration is not going to be the deciding factor of this election: the lack of news about the caravan. I actually expected to be inundated with news about it by now, yet there has been next to nothing. If it really was that much of a weakness for Harris, Trump’s allies would be ratcheting up the hysteria about it, and probably causing additional instability in Latin America to make it happen.
There's no question that Biden's executive order from earlier in the year that finally diffused the bottleneck at the border has helped take the issue out of the headlines. I suspect the cake is baked with a large number of voters but stemming the relentless tide of the previous three years has taken momentum away from the issue. The situation no longer seems as urgent. Had the border crossing numbers from February persisted, I contend that my prediction of the time that it would be the top issue would have unequivocally materialized. Now I'm hedging a bit that it will be #1, but will ultimately stand by the prediction because I think in working-class circles, it's still #1.
As for caravans, once Maduro failed to stand down after the Venezuela election, I suspected another caravan would take form and cause headaches just in time for the election. I haven't heard about that materializing but won't rest easy about it until another month has passed.
Kind of a chicken versus egg argument there. Did people whose top issue is immigration become Trump voters? Or is immigration their top issue because they're Trump voters?
I think there's a strong case that in 2016, it was the former, and the tea leaves give some indication the issue is transcending racial lines. Kornacki was breaking down a new poll exclusive to Latino voters on "Meet the Press" this morning that was full of warning signs.
There have always been people who wanted to close the door after they got in, but most of the xenophobia that's driving votes for Trump isn't from non-white people.
Let's not lose the main point: if a segment that's mostly Trump supporters is against immigration and immigrants, that doesn't indicate a danger for Democrats in the election, but rather, who supports Trump.
Here’s my thoughts on this. Politics vs policy imo.
Politically, this is a very shrewd and smart move for Harris to embrace the tough border deal and move the Democratic Party further right on the issue. If she can start eating away Trump’s advantage on the economy and immigration, she’s far more likely to win. I’ve often felt that Democrats should pick 1 issue to break from our base on to help win more elections. Like Hassan’s last minute announcement of not allowing refugees relocating to her state. Or Peltola’s oil/gas support. Just 1 thing where you fit your constituents better, not your party, giving credibility to the voters who decide which party candidate wins every election.
Policy wise though, I despise it. But I also recognize, this bill is where a majority of Americans are, who want tougher border laws. Either center or center-right depending on your own political ideology policy in exchange for fixing the broken immigration system and Democrats hopefully winning the presidency is a trade I make every day of the week. Do I have compassion for those who will be negatively impacted like those showing up at the border? Yes. Do I wish they would be welcomed? Yes. Am I willing to risk a Trump’s presidency or Republicans in government on this 1 policy when I like 90% of the rest of Harris platform? No. I’ll swallow it and become a full throated supporter of the border deal bill.
Those voters stuck in the middle get two entirely different version of reality bombarded by both parties and I think you’re far more likely to get them moving to the center or right on a key policy issue then if you just went with the progressive mindset on everything.
Governing means compromise, so overall it’s her best move politically, but her worst move on policy.
Yup and this border deal bill support could open the door to undecided or Trump leaning voters to at least opening their ears to the rest of the Harris campaign on other topics. They may not end up liking it, but at least they could hear her out whereas maybe before they didn’t.
We don’t know exactly why, but at least in GOP swing voter focus groups, this is what has happened. Undecided voters moved to Lean Kamala and Lean Trump voters moved to Undecided.
Like I said, there’s no actual way to prove what exactly did it, but if I were a betting man, I’d say it’s because she moved to the middle and shed her previous progressive vibes and policy wise. She’s viewed as the more moderate candidate right now.
People who don’t vote on policy aka swing voters don’t want either a far left progressive or a far right conservative. Which ever party’s candidate successfully defines their opponent as more extreme wins the majority of the undecided voters. Trump won the majority of them in 2016. Biden won the majority of them in 2020. I’m hoping Harris wins them in 2024.
Again, I have no way to prove this, though. That said, 2022 elections wound up exactly as that, where Democrats successfully defined their opponents as extremists in a lot of swing seats with a Republican leaning electorate, which turned a potential wave into a trickle. So, I think this explanation fits well.
I’ll also add, this intuitively and evidence wise makes a lot of sense. Trump had been tied with Harris for some time, but now it’s considered tilting her direction. 2-3% doesn’t seem like much of a difference, but there aren’t a whole lot of undecided voters in the first place. So a 2-3% shift showing up in swing voter focus groups almost uniformly? Yeah, I can buy that being the case nationally.
On July 29th Harris was up 44.4-44.0% or +0.4 points up in the 538 average. Today she’s up 48.5-45.7% or +2.8 points up.
Well stated. I don't think I have to embrace everything a candidate does to support her, though. I will continue to oppose steps against people needing asylum as immoral and unacceptable.
That’s fair enough! For me, it’s a great way to show how extreme and out of touch Republicans are with average Americans so I’m going to continue promoting it even if I don’t agree with it. It’s pretty much the big issue I disagree with her on and it’s one where the Democratic base is out of touch with what the majority want, which is important to those few swing voters who hate both parties and always decide every election winner.
Joe Biden in 2020 had the different from Democrats, “old white guy moderate” to entice these voters esthetically to help win their votes in the middle or centre-right. Yes, people hated Trump, but against other Democrats who ran in the primary to the left? Maybe they don’t vote for them, stay home, write-in/3rd party or vote for Trump and he’s still president right now.
Kamala doesn’t have that esthetic to win crossover votes, so she needed 1 issue to break from the party base and moved her party closer to where the country is, to signal her independence as a “different Democrat” to try to win those crucial voters again. They were closed off to Biden due to feeling he wasn’t up to being president another 4 years, but now they’re open to hearing her pitch.
Also, I think we’re closer on policy then we think because verified claims of refugees should be and is accepted by Harris as the right thing to do. But it’s the lead up to those claims being proven where the disagreement comes from on the process. We agree on the end result though.
https://politicalwire.com/2024/09/27/democrats-hard-line-evolution-on-immigration/
So, I get that Harris is trying to outflank Trump on undocumented immigration, but are the Democrats going to join the Republicans in being demagogic about immigration from now on, becoming part of the problem and keeping undocumented immigrants an underclass whose rights as workers can be violated with impunity while employers use them to undercut legal labor and the U.S. shuts itself off to refugees running for their lives because their arrival, like that of refugees from the Nazis in their day, is inconvenient, or will she pander amorally only for the duration of the campaign and then disappoint those many or few people who were sold on her expediently momentary hard line? Is immigration reform now a completely dead idea because the Democrats have concluded that it's politically inconvenient and they can successfully appeal to people who hate immigrants and immigration? And just how many people who would have otherwise voted against them are really going to be sold on this new-found hard line by the Democrats against the huddled masses yearning to breathe free?
"While we understand that many people are desperate to migrate to the United States, our system must be orderly and secure. And that is my goal."
Sounds reasonable. And reasonable is what her entire campaign is built on.
Yeah, that certainly is reasonable, but I didn't like the bill Trump killed, and considering that economists figured out that it was only due to immigration, including illegal immigration, that the U.S. economy bounced back from the Covid doldrums, shutting ourselves off from asylum-seekers is definitely not a wise policy.
Agreed.
However, there should be an ongoing effort to ensure countries where asylum-seekers are coming from can get better economies. The U.S. doesn’t always have to be the only place where employment opportunities should be.
Of course, there would have to be trade-offs with certain countries depending on what their economies are like. This would be more of an ongoing foreign policy affair.
Last time I checked only about 10% of those who’ve left Venezuela ended up in the U.S. a far smaller percentage of refugees from Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan are here. It’s not close to being the case that the US is the only country taking refugees/asylees, despite being a leading cause of why folks are leaving their homes.
Also Cuba although I don’t see migrants to represent a substantial portion of those coming in the US.
That said, if there’s an opportunity to build strong relations with a country where migrants are coming from it’s Cuba. President Miguel Diaz-Canel has expressed openness for continuing relations with the US although during the Trump and Biden Administration they have taken a back burner.
With Venezuela, it’s more complicated.
https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/hialeah/article285207352.html
The fact that Harris went to the border on a late September campaign stop tells me she continues to feel highly vulnerable on this issue. If it was really only the "fifth most important issue to voters" as some around here have said, she wouldn't be making a point of drawing attention to it in a swing state this late in the campaign.
Could Biden have put a lid on the gaming of the asylum process earlier than the fourth year of his Presidency? That's the underlying question here that shapes this debate and why the border issue is such a profound vulnerability. Democrats raised their hands in support of decriminalizing border crossings in 2019 and 2020, and because the "asylum" loophole was allowed to be manipulated for millions of border crossings for so long before Biden finally dropped a executive order with some teeth in the months before the election, voters can be forgiven if they believe that decriminalized border crossings are exactly what we got. A more perfect road map to tap the vein of MAGA fury could not possibly have been paved.
But one thing is absolutely for sure......any political will for good-faith comprehensive immigration reform legislation that significantly expands the number of legal immigrants granted visas has been crushed for the foreseeable future in the deference to accommodating so many people allowed to cross the border illegally. Those who've defended the manipulation of the asylum process for so long have only succeeded in setting back the political clock on the immigration reform debate decades.
Your position on immigration is clear, but do you think Harris will convince anyone that she's suddenly anti-immigration?
There's a middle ground between being "anti-immigration" and signalling stronger enforcement of border crossings. I'm pretty confident that a sizable share of immigration-senstitive voters would reward a political leader who could clearly articulate that they recognize the difference.
The other thing is that there is a segment of progressives who wants no immigration enforcement at all or complete open borders. If you don’t agree with that 100%, you’re automatically a “racist”.
That segment can be marginalized, just like the "defund the police" folks can be. So that's largely a non-issue.
Fair point.
Must like many other right-wing straw men, I'm sure these kinds of people exist and are incredibly obnoxious and also incredibly online, but this is not a large or even viable constituency in the party. To put it in context, literal Nazi sympathizers and self-identified Nazis are a larger and more influential constituency in the Republican party than these far-left college activists are in Democratic politics.
I know people who are in the zero enforcement camp, and not just online. (Some of my acquaintances regularly go to rallies and vigils outside a Boston jail where migrants are detained.) But I agree that outside of the progressive / leftist bubble they carry very little weight.
She and Biden had me convinced they, like Obama and Hillary, were more than willing to throw human rights out with the bathwater when it comes to pandering to xenophobia on border issues. Better than Trump, but no wonder so many Latinos are disillusioned with Dems and registering independent.
I’m half-Hispanic. Not all Hispanics support illegal immigration.
If you support 3 year olds representing themselves in immigration proceedings, as was official policy defended in court by the Obama administration, you’ll be the first Hispanic Democrat I’ve talked to who did.
Also, no, why would you think it proves the issue is not #5? #5 is still important.
If she goes she is admitting she is vulnerable, if she doesn't go she is afraid of the issue. Head I win, tails you lose.
I do think Harris made the conscious decision to spend this week addressing her "less popular" issues - economy and immigration. She's tackling perceived weaknesses directly rather than ignoring them, figuring the benefit outweighs the danger of making those issues more salient.
Am I sure it's the right choice? No, I'm not sure. If I had to guess, I'd say it's wise, but I don't know.
So that “someone” who claimed it was the 5th most important issue was me, and I provided polling to back up that assertion in response to your claim that a plurality of voters considered it the key issue. I’m still waiting for you to provide a link to the poll where that result was obtained.
In the meantime he’s a poll that shows it as the #2 issue. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1362236/most-important-voter-issues-us/ But don’t get too excited because that’s with only 11% of people naming it as the their key issue. Here’s another one https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/poll-finding/kff-health-tracking-poll-september-2024-harris-v-trump-on-key-health-care-issues/ where immigration is #3, but again with only 12% identifying it as the primary issue.
What the evidence seems to show, is that Republicans care far more about immigration than anyone else does. It consistently ranks as the #2 issue for Republicans. Could it rank higher for potential voters in some swing states (AZ, NV) and TX where the Senate seat seems to be in play? Sure, and if you have any polling on that (or again, any polling that supports your position at all) I’d be happy to see it and take it into consideration. I’m starting to think you don’t actually have any though.
None have come up in a cursory scan of polls. Most polls seem to be asking "is this issue important to you?" and then ticking off a bunch of issues with responses to "very important" to "not very important". Not many polls are outright asking voters what their #1 issue is. The exit polls will and I'll stand by my prediction from late last year that "immigration and the border" will top the list. I could be wrong and either the economy or reproductive rights rank higher, but I can predict with high confidence that immigration and the border will rank higher than 11% on voters' top issues.
Considering most elections in Europe in the last few years has turned on immigration, it's pretty tone-deaf to think the laws of gravity won't apply here, especially now that the unwritten "I won't talk about immigration if you won't" truce ended among Presidential nominees after the Obama years. The yawning class divide over this issue makes it easy for the college boys in the media and in election analysis community to fail to notice how salient the issue is outside their upscale suburban cul-de-sacs. We'll know in a little over a month who was right I guess.
If you're right that that's the #1 issue, it's not going to be by people who want fewer hassles at the border, and Trump will win by a considerable margin. I think it's extremely unlikely to be the #1 issue.
There are literally two polls in my comment above that ask “what is the most important issue to you” so they’re not that hard to find. No idea on how good the pollsters are but they’re out there. I think the polls that ask about relative importance would actually support your theory better since it would allow someone to say both the economy and immigration are important to them.
Regarding Europe, I’m not sure it’s an apples to apples comparison. You’ve got the Scandis, where yes, from what I’ve read immigration is a big issue. But those are very white countries. I would expect the fear of people of color to be greater than that in heterogeneous societies. And LePen keeps getting closer and closer in France. But, well, France… Additionally, the aftereffects of colonization are much more recent there, so the dynamic is probably different. Issue polls for the EU are even harder to find than for the US though, so if you have any links to them would be happy to review them.
I am going to agree with you on one thing though, and this goes against my assumptions, but immigration probably will rank higher than health care / abortion in the exit polls. I do think though, that how many people base their vote on each issue is still up for debate.
Look mate, I’m really not trying to be a dick here. But one of the main reasons I started posting on DKE was because people were just throwing out random opinions and stating them as fact. While I disagree with it, I have no problem with your theory that immigration is the key issue, it’s a legitimate hypothesis. The reason I keep pushing back is because you have constantly claimed that you have facts to back your opinion up but those facts have never materialized. I try to be very clear in what I conclude from evidence vs what is my gut instinct, if you did the same I wouldn’t be nearly so argumentative.
And to clarify, there were actually polls showing immigration as the #1 issue, but they were from before the Democratic nominee swap and thus obsolete.
Which polls? Because if we’ve seen immigration as an issue decrease in importance with the “Border Czar” as candidate that is extremely promising.
Here's one....
https://news.gallup.com/poll/611135/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx
Thanks for that. If you dig into the actual poll responses https://news.gallup.com/file/poll/611138/240226MIPEcon.pdf economic issues still top Immigration 30-28. It’s just that only 12% of folks said Economy in General while the other 18% cited something more specific. When you break it down by party, the percentage responses for Economic Issues, Economy In General, Immigration are:
Rep: 29-11-57
Ind: 34-13-22
Dem: 27-12-10
So as with all the other polls I’ve seen, it’s largely something Republicans care about. Less than 1 in 4 Independents cite it as their primary concern. As mentioned above, I’m surprised to see health care / abortion listed so low.
It seems Gallup used some selective data points in order to claim that Immigration is the #1 issue.
Since it’s a monthly poll we have more recent data to look at as well, https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx. From Feb to Sep, the economy in general has gone from 12% to 24%, economic issues as a whole from 30 to 44% and Immigration from 28 to 22%.
My theory, which the data seems to support, is that except for the hardcore Republicans, most people don’t care that much about immigration, except when they’re told to. Was there anything going on in February 2024 which may have caused increase interest in immigration? I had to look up the timing of it but yup, that’s when the Immigration Bill was in the news. If you look at the trend lines in the first link the number of people who named immigration as their #1 issue tripled between Aug 2023 and Feb 2024. I suspect there was a corresponding increase in news coverage about it as well.
Similarly, since the breakdown of the Immigration bill, there has been a mostly steady decrease, with a recent uptick in September, which I would guess is due to the latest racist crap being pushed by the Republican Party.
Which leads me to my final conclusion as to why immigration is not going to be the deciding factor of this election: the lack of news about the caravan. I actually expected to be inundated with news about it by now, yet there has been next to nothing. If it really was that much of a weakness for Harris, Trump’s allies would be ratcheting up the hysteria about it, and probably causing additional instability in Latin America to make it happen.
There's no question that Biden's executive order from earlier in the year that finally diffused the bottleneck at the border has helped take the issue out of the headlines. I suspect the cake is baked with a large number of voters but stemming the relentless tide of the previous three years has taken momentum away from the issue. The situation no longer seems as urgent. Had the border crossing numbers from February persisted, I contend that my prediction of the time that it would be the top issue would have unequivocally materialized. Now I'm hedging a bit that it will be #1, but will ultimately stand by the prediction because I think in working-class circles, it's still #1.
As for caravans, once Maduro failed to stand down after the Venezuela election, I suspected another caravan would take form and cause headaches just in time for the election. I haven't heard about that materializing but won't rest easy about it until another month has passed.
" I think in working-class circles, it's still #1." Because they're mostly Trump supporters.
Kind of a chicken versus egg argument there. Did people whose top issue is immigration become Trump voters? Or is immigration their top issue because they're Trump voters?
I think there's a strong case that in 2016, it was the former, and the tea leaves give some indication the issue is transcending racial lines. Kornacki was breaking down a new poll exclusive to Latino voters on "Meet the Press" this morning that was full of warning signs.
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/poll-democrats-advantage-with-latino-voters-continues-to-shrink-steve-kornacki-explains-220388421745
There have always been people who wanted to close the door after they got in, but most of the xenophobia that's driving votes for Trump isn't from non-white people.
Let's not lose the main point: if a segment that's mostly Trump supporters is against immigration and immigrants, that doesn't indicate a danger for Democrats in the election, but rather, who supports Trump.
Here’s my thoughts on this. Politics vs policy imo.
Politically, this is a very shrewd and smart move for Harris to embrace the tough border deal and move the Democratic Party further right on the issue. If she can start eating away Trump’s advantage on the economy and immigration, she’s far more likely to win. I’ve often felt that Democrats should pick 1 issue to break from our base on to help win more elections. Like Hassan’s last minute announcement of not allowing refugees relocating to her state. Or Peltola’s oil/gas support. Just 1 thing where you fit your constituents better, not your party, giving credibility to the voters who decide which party candidate wins every election.
Policy wise though, I despise it. But I also recognize, this bill is where a majority of Americans are, who want tougher border laws. Either center or center-right depending on your own political ideology policy in exchange for fixing the broken immigration system and Democrats hopefully winning the presidency is a trade I make every day of the week. Do I have compassion for those who will be negatively impacted like those showing up at the border? Yes. Do I wish they would be welcomed? Yes. Am I willing to risk a Trump’s presidency or Republicans in government on this 1 policy when I like 90% of the rest of Harris platform? No. I’ll swallow it and become a full throated supporter of the border deal bill.
Those voters stuck in the middle get two entirely different version of reality bombarded by both parties and I think you’re far more likely to get them moving to the center or right on a key policy issue then if you just went with the progressive mindset on everything.
Governing means compromise, so overall it’s her best move politically, but her worst move on policy.
Valid points. Harris has shown she can be tough when she needs to be, especially on the issue of immigration.
Yup and this border deal bill support could open the door to undecided or Trump leaning voters to at least opening their ears to the rest of the Harris campaign on other topics. They may not end up liking it, but at least they could hear her out whereas maybe before they didn’t.
I'm doubtful about that.
We don’t know exactly why, but at least in GOP swing voter focus groups, this is what has happened. Undecided voters moved to Lean Kamala and Lean Trump voters moved to Undecided.
Because of her statements about limiting asylum?
Like I said, there’s no actual way to prove what exactly did it, but if I were a betting man, I’d say it’s because she moved to the middle and shed her previous progressive vibes and policy wise. She’s viewed as the more moderate candidate right now.
People who don’t vote on policy aka swing voters don’t want either a far left progressive or a far right conservative. Which ever party’s candidate successfully defines their opponent as more extreme wins the majority of the undecided voters. Trump won the majority of them in 2016. Biden won the majority of them in 2020. I’m hoping Harris wins them in 2024.
Again, I have no way to prove this, though. That said, 2022 elections wound up exactly as that, where Democrats successfully defined their opponents as extremists in a lot of swing seats with a Republican leaning electorate, which turned a potential wave into a trickle. So, I think this explanation fits well.
I’ll also add, this intuitively and evidence wise makes a lot of sense. Trump had been tied with Harris for some time, but now it’s considered tilting her direction. 2-3% doesn’t seem like much of a difference, but there aren’t a whole lot of undecided voters in the first place. So a 2-3% shift showing up in swing voter focus groups almost uniformly? Yeah, I can buy that being the case nationally.
On July 29th Harris was up 44.4-44.0% or +0.4 points up in the 538 average. Today she’s up 48.5-45.7% or +2.8 points up.
Well stated. I don't think I have to embrace everything a candidate does to support her, though. I will continue to oppose steps against people needing asylum as immoral and unacceptable.
That’s fair enough! For me, it’s a great way to show how extreme and out of touch Republicans are with average Americans so I’m going to continue promoting it even if I don’t agree with it. It’s pretty much the big issue I disagree with her on and it’s one where the Democratic base is out of touch with what the majority want, which is important to those few swing voters who hate both parties and always decide every election winner.
Joe Biden in 2020 had the different from Democrats, “old white guy moderate” to entice these voters esthetically to help win their votes in the middle or centre-right. Yes, people hated Trump, but against other Democrats who ran in the primary to the left? Maybe they don’t vote for them, stay home, write-in/3rd party or vote for Trump and he’s still president right now.
Kamala doesn’t have that esthetic to win crossover votes, so she needed 1 issue to break from the party base and moved her party closer to where the country is, to signal her independence as a “different Democrat” to try to win those crucial voters again. They were closed off to Biden due to feeling he wasn’t up to being president another 4 years, but now they’re open to hearing her pitch.
Also, I think we’re closer on policy then we think because verified claims of refugees should be and is accepted by Harris as the right thing to do. But it’s the lead up to those claims being proven where the disagreement comes from on the process. We agree on the end result though.
Yeah, if your asylum case isn't heard because they don't like where you ran to, it doesn't matter if Harris would theoretically consider it valid.