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Thanks for that. If you dig into the actual poll responses news.gallup.com/file/po… 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, Imm…
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.