G. Elliott Morris with the latest issue polling average:
Focusing on Trump’s issue-by-issue approval, the president has also lost significant ground on immigration. When he took office in Jan. 2025, immigration was the president’s strongest issue. He was actually in positive territory — around +8 net approval — on handling immigration. Voters signaled in the 2024 election that they wanted tougher border enforcement — and at first, they trusted him to deliver it. Trump promised deportations for criminals and no new border crossings, and that’s what voters expected to get.
But now, a year later, that advantage has completely evaporated. My aggregate now shows Trump at -10 on immigration — a collapse of roughly 18 points from his peak. And on deportations specifically (which other aggregators, puzzlingly, do not break out as a separate issue), Trump is at -12.
He makes an interesting observation here that I think is true and I wish more people in politics would absorb:
The way I have been thinking about this is that by pushing extreme enforcement measures that are now resulting in the deaths of innocent American citizens, Trump has changed the images people attach to the word “immigration” in their heads. When “immigration” doesn’t mean “pictures of migrants under an overpass in south Texas” but “ICE officer killing a woman in her car and calling her a ‘fucking bitch’” or “regular guy being shot 10 times in the back after being tackled to the ground and disarmed”, that’s going to change how people view the issue.
As I wrote last April, opinions change when voters get new information about an issue. The information that has been saturating U.S. political news in the last month is violence against citizens that is a direct result of the president’s policies.
We can see this in the data. YouGov found on Jan. 24 that 48% of Americans believed the shooting of Alex Pretti was not justified, compared to just 20% who said it was. Among respondents who reported they had seen video of Pretti being killed, the margin widened to 63% unjustified vs 25% justified. Even among Republicans, only 44% call the shooting justified.
The Republicans live in a bubble and don’t want to hear that their Dear Leader is screwing up. But sometimes that news cannot be contained. And when it escapes the news silos it changes people’s minds. That’s why it’s important for the Democrats to do everything in their power (and I realize it’s not easy) to get that out.
I still maintain that this story has stuck because they made the decision to go to a very white, mid-western, northern city where the population is about as “Real America” as it gets and they treated them like they treat the inner cities in big blue states. They didn’t realize that there are millions of white Americans who find their policies to be abominable and are willing to take a stand on behalf of the minorities in their communities against this fascist onslaught.
When people see old people being brutalized and beaten on the streets, a young blond woman getting shot in the head by a panicked, out of control ice agent who says “fuckin’ bitch” after he shoots her and then two weeks later they gun down a 37 year old white, male, gun owner, it starts to sink in that this is an actual war against anyone who exercises their rights.
Something has changed and it’s important to adapt to that. I really hope the Democrats aren’t so stuck on the “don’t make trouble just talk about egg prices” strategy that they miss this opening to mortally wound the MAGA movement. We’ve been warning about this for years now and it’s finally here. Will they seize the moment?