Approval of Trump’s immigration policies declining
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The backlash to Trump is not confined to his handling of the economy:
New YouGov/Economist poll out this morning finds Trump is no longer popular on immigration. This was the last issue he had a positive net approval on. This was very easy to see coming, esp bc individual components of immigration policy are so toxic: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/should-dem…
[image or embed]— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) April 23, 2025 at 7:30 AM
Approval of Trump’s handling of immigration fell 10 points over the last week. Obviously the backlash to the KAG case worked, and it would have been a mistake not to talk about this — from both a rights perspective and the POV of moving opinion against POTUS.— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) April 23, 2025 at 7:37 AM
I’m not the first person to observe this, but while most of Trump’s base is presumably supportive of even Trump’s most brutal anti-immigration policies, a lot of his marginal voters assumed that his immigration policies were somewhere on the spectrum between Obama and Biden’s (“he won’t go after you, you didn’t do anything wrong.”) A case that highlights that this isn’t true, combined with open defiance of the courts. helps to illustrate that this isn’t true.
It is true that Trump handling of immigration is relatively popular compared to his handling of other issues, and obviously it’s not going to be a central issue in the 2026 Democratic campaign. But there’s another side to it — if you can mitigate Trump’s advantage on the issue, he’s got nothing else to run on. Focusing on Trump’s most egregious abuses is good on the merits and it’s good politics.