A data point in the new Scripps News national poll caught my eye this morning.
It was this: 54% of voters support the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants from America. Here’s the breakdown by party:
Which I found super interesting. Obviously Donald Trump has made mass deportation a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign— and insisted the country has no choice but to do it.
And the Scripps poll at least suggests he is advocating for a proposal that Americans, well, want.
Mindful of my own advice not to draw conclusions off a single poll, I went searching for other data on mass deportation. I found two recent polls.
The first, conducted in June by CBS, found support for mass deportation even higher — 62% of voters said they favored the idea. Roughly 9 in 10 Republicans were in favor but so were one in three Democrats.
The second, from April and done by Harris for Axios, pegged support for mass deportation at 51%. Support among Republicans was at 68% while 46% of independents and 42% of Democrats backed the idea.
That data is all pretty consistent — and points to this conclusion: A majority of Americans like and support the notion of rounding up all undocumented immigrants in the country and shipping them out of the U.S..
Which is very important — especially because immigration is consistently one of the two or three issues that voters say matter most to them in this election. And suggests that Trump should drive hard on this issue — and his mass deportation proposal specifically — in the closing 48 days of the election.
Will he? That’s the Trump conundrum. If past is prologue, he will struggle to make the race anything but a referendum on his personality. And that is a race he likely will lose.
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The Morning: This is how Trump wins