Donald Trump’s plan to carry out the “largest deportation in American history” has more support than one might think. Specifically, 54% of voters support the Republican candidate’s key policy, according to a poll Scripps News/Ipsos poll published on Wednesday. By political affiliation, 86% of Republicans were in favor of the measure, along with a quarter of Democrats surveyed. And although the poll shows that a higher percentage of voters have a more favorable opinion of Kamala Harris than Donald Trump, 44% of them trust that the former president would do a better job in handling immigration than the vice president (34%).
Consistent with several previous polls, the Scripps News/Ipsos poll ranks immigration among voters’ top three concerns heading into Nov. 5, with 39 percent citing it as one of the most important issues facing the country, second only to inflation, which tops the list at 57 percent. Securing the country’s southern border with Mexico was cited as the nation’s top immigration priority.
As for what restrictive immigration policies they would like to see implemented, 69% support limiting the number of immigrants who can apply for asylum, as the Biden administration has done since last June. In addition, 62% agree that local security forces can detain immigrants, a power reserved for the federal government but which several conservative states – especially Texas, but also Louisiana and Iowa – have tried to take over with laws that make illegal immigration a crime and allow local police to detain and imprison people suspected of being undocumented.
These two measures are followed by the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants: 54% said they “very” or “somewhat” supported this proposal, a central part of the Republican Party’s immigration policy. Trump has been promising for months that he will deport 11 million people from the country, but he has not specified how, when and who he would deport, beyond saying that he would use the military and law enforcement to do so. Without offering any other details, the candidate recently said that deportations would begin in Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado. In recent weeks, Trump and his campaign have spread lies about immigration in these two towns, falsely accusing the Haitian community in Springfield of eating local pets and claiming that a Venezuelan criminal gang has taken over Aurora.
A report A Pew Research Center survey released last June already showed an increase in voter support for mass deportation: 37% of voters were then in favor of the measure, up 11% from 2021. Notably, the Pew survey showed that roughly one in ten Democratic voters supported such a policy, while the Scripps News/Ipsos poll reveals that percentage has now risen to 25%.
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
However, a large majority of voters — regardless of party affiliation — continue to support granting a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, the so-called dreamers, According to this survey, conducted between September 13 and 15 on a sample of 1,027 adults, the margin of error is 3.6 percentage points.
Other concerns
With less than 50 days until the election, 71% of voters are concerned that officials will not accept the election results, with 37% saying they are “very concerned” about this. At this point, Trump continues to question the results of the 2020 election, going so far as to say in the last presidential debate that there is “so much evidence” that he won against Biden. This despite having been impeached twice for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Additionally, 51% of all voters — and 82% of Republicans — are concerned about non-citizens voting in elections. By law, non-citizens cannot vote in the United States. Yet Trump has sought to fuel the false claim that there are undocumented immigrants in the country committing massive voter fraud.
Despite several experts saying that it is very rare for this to happen and therefore there is no way it could influence the election results, the former president’s allies in Congress are trying to tie federal government funding to states requiring proof of citizenship when people register to vote. So far they have not succeeded, but Trump has already warned his party in Congress that they should not support “in any way” any proposal to avoid a partial government shutdown on October 1 that does not address alleged illegal voting by immigrants.
#voters #support #Trumps #promise #largest #deportation #history