Posted on 03/31/2016 2:08:40 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Normally, with an issue as complex as immigration, it’s hard to pinpoint any one thing that’s driving a notable shift in opinion. Unless there’s a sudden surge at the border, as there was in the summer of 2014 with children from Central America being sent north via Mexico, there’s no obvious reason for public opinion to change dramatically within a narrow six-month window, as it has here. In fact, if you’d asked me to guess whether support for the wall was up or down lately, I’d guess up for the simple reason that Americans are more worried about terrorism now after major attacks in Paris and Brussels. You don’t want jihadis sneaking in, right? Then build the wall.
But that’s not what we see. On the contrary.
Five years ago the public was evenly divided. Six months ago the public was still evenly divided. Six months later, boom — a disaster at 38/58. What changed? Why isn’t terrorism turning those numbers upside down? Despite how it may seem on cable news, not every development in national politics is driven by Trumpmania, but it’s hard to argue with Harry Enten’s silver-bullet explanation for the shift absent any major developments in immigration patterns:
@allahpundit It could be that Trump has made the issue so his thing that it basically meant if you're against Trump you're against the wall.
— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) March 31, 2016
Right. This is no longer a national issue, it’s a “Trump issue,” and some voters will let their antipathy to Trump writ large dictate how they feel about particular policies on which he’s taken a strong stance. More data:
Democrats are a mirror image of Trump fans here. There may be some smallish but meaningful contingent of independents or centrist Dems who tentatively favor a wall but are recoiling from it now as part of the process of recoiling from Trump. That’s surprising since you’re not seeing a similar effect on opinions about torture, another issue with which Trump is closely identified. But maybe that’s a function of the relative prominence of the two issues. Immigration is Trump’s bread and butter and a key part of his pitch in the primaries. Torture is more marginal. Either that or Americans’ support for torture is more solid than their support for a wall, such that Trump endorsing both will repel soft support from the latter but not the former. Another mystery: Opinion on a different facet of immigration, i.e. whether to allow illegals to remain in the U.S., hasn’t moved much at all in Pew’s data. Support for letting them stay is at a three-year high of 75 percent, but it stood at 74 percent six months ago and 73 percent back in 2013. If there’s a backlash to Trump driving a backlash to the wall, why isn’t it also driving a backlash against the idea of deporting illegals? (Possible answer: Support for letting illegals stay is already about as high as it can go.)
If you’ve got the time it’s worth flipping through the rest of Pew’s poll, which has fascinating data about the differences between Trump, Cruz, and Kasich supporters on issues like free trade, support for gay marriage, and so son. Although here’s probably the most important difference if you’re looking ahead to November:
On balance, Trump fans think Cruz is more likely to be a good president than a bad one. Meanwhile, there are twice as many Cruz fans who think Trump would be a bad president than a good one. Relatedly:
The 38 percent who expect the party to unite behind Trump as nominee at this point in the primaries is far lower than the number who expected unity behind the last three losing Republican nominees for president. In another data set, Pew asked registered voters generally whether they thought the five remaining presidential candidates would make great, good, fair, poor, or terrible presidents. Cruz pulled 29/36 on great/good versus poor/terrible, with 19 percent saying terrible. Hillary pulled 33/46, with 30 percent saying terrible. Trump: 26/59, with … 44 percent saying terrible. If you believe WaPo’s new poll today, he’s deeply underwater with all sorts of various swing-voter groups (for example, a 33/64 favorable rating among independents) and is even viewed unfavorably by 51 percent of … white men. Worst of all, there’s a statistical case for believing that general election polls start having predictive value beginning in mid-April of an election year, which is rapidly approaching:
The authors found that around 300 days before the election (mid-January), general election polls are essentially meaningless — their predictive value is close to zero. But by the time we get to mid-April of the election year, polls explain about half the variance in the eventual vote split. And mid-April polls have correctly “called” the winner in about two-thirds of the cases since 1952.
Things still change quite a bit afterward, of course, but in that three-month period (which encompasses most or sometimes all of the contested primary voting), we’ve gone from polls telling us basically nothing about what will happen to polls telling us “about half the story” of the election, says Wlezien.
Some casual voters are finally starting to tune into the campaign and rendering their initial verdicts on the candidates. Those verdicts are provisional and can be revisited before November, but as always in life, the first impression tends to stick. On that note, your exit question via Sean Trende: If nominating Trump turns into the sort of wipeout for the GOP that the numbers now suggest, what is U.S. immigration law apt to look like circa 2020?
Hot air. Nuff said.
Poll taken in Mexico or among invaders on this side of the border.
PEW poll...
I’ll say!
This is interesting, coming out the same time a poll showing fracking is losing support. Wow.
I believe this poll......
and The Great Pumpkil
Total nuclear disarmament to attain global nirvana
I believe a in lot of other things too !
Pew.
Right. I trust them like I trust 0bama.
Now they are conducting polls to tear down Trump’s strong issues. I’m so sick of these people and their stupid polls.
“:^)
Fair enough...
I’ve been warned!
Yes. Lilke another Islamic massacre in Belgium would bring down support for a wall. Polls like this have zero credibility.
Build the f...ing wall.
~~Go Trump, GO!!~~ ~~Go Trump, GO!!~~ ~~Go Trump, GO!!~~
and The Great Pumpkil
Total nuclear disarmament to attain global nirvana
I believe a in lot of other things too !
Ya and you forgot the Tooth Fairy.
People are identifying this issue with Trump, for good reason.
People who dislike Trump strongly now no longer look at this issue as an isolated question. Instead they see that supporting the wall is offering tacit support to Trump’s campaign.
Such people no longer want to appear to support him by supporting his signature policy initiative, so they have changed their answers to the poll question.
Or it’s a biased poll and they sampled too many left-handed Lutherans and Pew is always wrong etc etc.
I bet if they changed the poll question from “BUILD A WALL” to “SECURE THE BORDER” it would have received majority support.
Better hang it up, Donald. The party is over. The Mexican government, illegal invaders, Liberals, Chamber of Commerce people have won!
Just go home and let Hillary and Kasich spar it out like gentlemen persons. You've lost and George Soros the Globalists the people have won!
Re: wall, wishful thinking by the writer.
: )
The DemonRATs have spewed out their anti-wall propaganda to their mind-numbed supporters and it is having an effect. In our entire history of legal immigration, we have needed control over who enters the country. The no borders crowd should look at Europe for the consequences.
In the case of our Southern Border, we have destitute people impoverished by socialist countries, wanting to capitalize on the generosity of the U.S. taxpayer and their enablers, the Big Government trough. Without control, the taxpayer will be swamped with higher taxes, the workforce will be sabotaged with competition which is too intense for adaptation and the culture will be taxed to assimilate cultures that are not favorable to law and order.
After seeing Trump being attacked 24/7 for his positions on immigration, very few people are likely to express support publicly for a border wall.
I read something like this and I laugh. Not due to a probable bogus poll, but the entire ideology of open borders.
From the proponents of this ideology, what this tells me is citizenship means nothing. We who are citizens are fools.
What rights do we have that Illegal Immigrants don’t? I can easily argue that Illegal Immigrants actually have things better than we do.
They have representation, we don’t. They don’t have to pay income taxes, we do. They have government assistance, arguably easier than we do. They seemingly have all the rights that we do, including drivers licenses and even voting rights, although illegal on paper.
If this is what the ruling class wants, can we who are citizens renounce our citizenship and live here Illegally too?
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