Polls are coming fast and furious now, with just over three weeks remaining before the November election. The Wall Street Journal released a set on Friday morning, evaluating how voters in swing states viewed the candidacies of Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump. As with most other such polls, views were divided.<\/p>\n
The Journal poll also offered up a series of issues for which respondents were asked to pick the better candidates. The responses comported with what we\u2019ve seen elsewhere: Harris has an advantage on health care; Trump on the economy. The biggest gap between the candidates was on immigration, where Trump had a 16-point edge.<\/p>\n
That Trump is advantaged on immigration is also not new. He has enjoyed similar advantages consistently since the campaign began, one reason that he focuses so relentlessly on the issue in speeches and interviews. It\u2019s worth noting, though, that other polling released this week suggests that Americans actually prefer the immigration proposals Harris has put forward.<\/p>\n
Yahoo News on Wednesday published the results of a poll conducted by YouGov. In addition to asking respondents to evaluate policy proposals, it presented each candidate\u2019s central argument on immigration in the form of quotes \u2014 unattributed quotes \u2014 from campaign speeches. Two-thirds of Americans agree with Harris\u2019s framing of the issue as multipronged; just under half agreed with Trump\u2019s more apocalyptic and hyperbolic articulation.<\/p>\n
Even among Republicans, a majority agreed with Harris\u2019s way of articulating the appropriate response.<\/p>\n
YouGov also presented eight policy proposals that had been embraced by the candidates. Four came from the bipartisan border legislation that Harris has endorsed and that (as she frequently notes) Trump was instrumental in killing. Three come from Trump\u2019s campaign rhetoric. The last suggested that undocumented immigrants be given a pathway to citizenship, something that earns a subtle reference on Harris\u2019s campaign website.<\/p>\n
The four proposals from the immigration bill endorsed by Harris were the four most-popular proposals overall, although \u201cmaking it easier to expel immigrants\u201d was about as popular as several other proposals. Three of the four least-popular proposals were Trump\u2019s, including his pledge to round up, detain and deport millions of immigrants (though that was one of the ideas that was viewed about the same as \u201cmaking it easier\u201d).<\/p>\n
So on ideology (as indicated by the question about campaign rhetoric) and on policy (as indicated on the chart above), Harris seems to have an advantage. But on the broader question of \u201cimmigration,\u201d she continues to trail Trump.<\/p>\n
One reason is that Harris is given more blame for the situation at the border than is Trump. Harris is vice president, meaning her power is necessarily more limited than that of President Joe Biden. It\u2019s likely that her assumption of an immigration-related role within the administration \u2014 a move hyped by Trump (again hyperbolically) to suggest that she was centrally responsible for the border \u2014 drives a lot of this perception.<\/p>\n
That Trump was president and didn\u2019t build the wall the first time around, despite his promises, doesn\u2019t spur nearly as much blame from Americans.<\/p>\n
Part of what\u2019s at play, clearly, is that a lot of voters simply view Trump as \u201ctough on the border\u201d and Harris as \u201cnot.\u201d Fully three-quarters of respondents in the Yahoo-YouGov poll say that the border is a major problem or a crisis, and major problems and crises are not the sorts of things for which people appreciate nuanced responses.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also probably the case that respondents simply don\u2019t associate the proposals included in the bipartisan legislation with Harris, while they may associate her with proposals such as pathways to citizenship. On the flip side, of course, there is an ongoing under-appreciation of the destabilizing, arbitrary effects of a policy of mass deportation \u2014 advantaging Trump.<\/p>\n
The border is seen as a crisis and Trump projects a blunt image of toughness, a vibe that effectively neutralizes Harris\u2019s advantage on policy. The Yahoo-YouGov poll also asked respondents who they thought would do a better job handling immigration. These are the same people who preferred Harris\u2019s broad approach and her specific endorsed policies, mind you.<\/p>\n
Trump was preferred on immigration by 15 points.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Polls are coming fast and furious now, with just over three weeks remaining before the November election. The Wall Street Journal released a set on Friday morning, evaluating how voters in swing states viewed the candidacies of Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump. As with most other such polls, views were divided. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}