'Remarkable': Analyst stunned as new poll hits Trump on his top campaign issue
President Donald Trump is underwater with Americans who no longer trust him on the issue of immigration, which was one of his top two issues during the 2024 campaign. It comes days after polls showed that voters no longer trust him to act in the interest of national security.
In a post on X, The New Republic's Greg Sargent pointed to a newly released Quinnipiac poll, which finds a 14-point swing among Americans who want to give undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship instead of deporting them. Only 31% of Americans want to see immigrants deported. Just a few short months ago, Americans were evenly split on whether they wanted to support immigrants living in the United States.
"This is remarkable," Sargent wrote about the poll.
Sargent also pointed out just "how badly the media botched" the story about where Americans stood on immigration.
"People turned off their brains and forgot what was long obvious: Opinion on this is thermostatic. Trump isn't a magical exception. We need a better discourse on this," he lamented.
This week, the FBI acknowledged that assigning agents to handle counterterrorism and counterintelligence, rather than deportations, was a problem after all. An intermediary told the Trump administration last week at the G7 conference that Iran was prepared to tap "sleeper cells" in the United States to carry out attacks on American soil. The FBI has since reassigned the terrorism experts to their previous jobs.
Earlier this month, top Trump aide Stephen Miller demanded that ICE significantly increase its quota of deportations per day, angry that they were "lagging" behind his demands. Trump had campaigned last year that criminals would be targeted for deportation, but so far, that hasn't been the case. Federal authorities have deported migrants with no criminal history instead.
Kevin Robillard, the senior politics editor at the Huffington Post, pointed out that the Quinnipiac poll also shows more disastrous numbers for the GOP budget bill. Only two-thirds of Republicans now support, while two-thirds of independents are against it. Democratic opposition has consistently been above 85% and reached 87% in this poll.
He also pointed out that Americans have fumed about Trump deploying the Marines and National Guard into Los Angeles.
Trump's top two issues during the 2024 campaign were the economy and immigration, and his numbers in the Quinnipiac poll are both dancing around 40% approval, the worst ever on those issues.