Poll: 79% support citizenship for DREAMers -- including 66% of Republicans

The far-left outlet responsible for this highly cuck-ish piece of data is, you guessed it, Fox News. It was just two weeks ago that their man at 8 p.m., Tucker Carlson, sternly warned Trump to be careful about making a deal with Democrats to legalize DREAMers, as “a party this out of sync with its own voters will collapse and splinter.” We sure it’s Trump who’s out of sync with Republican voters on this?

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One knock on Fox’s question here: It doesn’t offer the middle-ground option of letting DREAMers stay in the U.S. as permanent residents. Polls that do offer that option find weaker support for outright citizenship. For instance, Morning Consult saw Republicans split 46/23 a few weeks ago between citizenship and permanent residence, with another 24 percent in favor of deportation. Combine the numbers for letting DREAMers stay, though, and you’re very close to what Fox found when it gave people an up-or-down vote on full citizenship. When push comes to shove, a heavy majority of Trump’s own party gives DREAMers thumbs up:

That’s in response to the question “Do you favor or oppose granting U.S. citizenship for illegal immigrants under the age of 30 who were brought to the United States as children, provided they pass a background check?” When you remove citizenship from the equation and instead ask only about work permits for DREAMers, the numbers climb higher. The public overall splits 86/12 in favor while Republicans are only slightly less enthusiastic at 80/17. Most surprisingly, when you expand the scope of the question to the entire working illegal population, not just DREAMers, Republicans still prefer legalization to deportation — heavily. Given a choice between deporting as many as possible and setting up a system to legalize them, 69 percent of GOPers prefer the latter versus 28 percent who prefer the former.

Is there a “Trump effect” here? Note this trend on the last question, about legalizing or deporting working illegals:

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Usually when we talk about a Trump effect in polling, we mean Trump pulling Republicans further towards nationalism or pushing liberals further towards the left. That’s probably what’s happening here — Democrats, recoiling against all things MAGA, are even more fanatically pro-amnesty in the Trump era than they were before and thus so is the overall population. It may be, though, that Trump’s flirtation with legalizing DREAMers has given some soft opponents of amnesty on the Republican side a sense of “permission” to further soften their own views. Er, towards *all* illegals, though?

Anyway. I want to flag one more table from Fox’s poll even though it has nothing to do with immigration. FNC asked people who approve of Trump and who disapprove of him to name the first thing that came to mind in terms of what he could do to change their opinion of him. If you like him, what could he do to make you like him less? If you dislike him, what could he do to make you like him more? Check this out:

It’s not his policies that anti-Trumpers name as the first problem that occurs to them. It’s him popping off like a loudmouth at the end of the bar on Twitter. When Fox got more specific, asking people whether “the way Donald Trump talks about North Korea” is helpful or not, they split 23/70; when the same question was asked about the way he talks about Iran, the split went 23/59. Interestingly, people who approve of Trump also named changing his Twitter use, or “not speaking his mind,” as the thing that could most get them to disapprove of him, but by a far smaller share — just 12 percent. If the numbers above are accurate, evidently POTUS could make himself quite a bit more popular just by … putting away his phone. As chance would have it, Nate Silver posted something yesterday making that very argument, that there appears to be a relationship between Trump acting especially crank-ish and insulting on Twitter and his job approval sliding. Silver even tried to project, via the available data, how high Trump’s approval might rise if he deleted the Twitter app and kept quiet for awhile. Best guess: Four points, which may not sounds like much in isolation but could be the difference between the GOP holding and losing the House next fall. His Twitter usage is the single most consistent reminder of what a loose cannon he is temperamentally. The less there is of it, the fewer the reminders.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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David Strom 11:20 AM | November 21, 2024
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