Analysis | Republicans really want border reforms … until they hear Trump doesn't – The Washington Post
The following statements about the U.S.-Mexico border are true.
The number of people being stopped at the border each month has consistently been substantially higher under President Biden than it was under Donald Trump or Barack Obama. That number is not equivalent to the number of people allowed to remain in the United States while claims of asylum are processed. There is no evidence that the increase in immigration has pushed crime rates higher. But particularly because of misinformation about those two preceding points, immigration is both politically useful for Republicans as November approaches and politically inconvenient for Biden.
For a moment, in one of those little flashes of competence that occasionally flicker into brief existence on Capitol Hill, it looked as though Republicans and Democrats might agree on changes that would potentially help reduce the number of people allowed to stay in the United States, reducing pressure on the federal government from localities dealing with an influx of residents. But that bipartisan deal collapsed in the face of right-wing opposition from Republicans, opposition driven heavily by Donald Trump and his awareness that immigration is inconvenient for his general-election opponent.
It can be easy to overstate Trump’s influence on things like this, certainly. Trump himself is always eager to present himself as the central factor in decision-making until such point as those decisions become unpopular. But new polling from Yahoo News, conducted by YouGov, shows that, this time, Trump’s opposition is significant.
Respondents to the poll were presented with different ways of handling immigration, four of which were included in the bipartisan agreement. In fact, of the six ideas presented to respondents, those four were the most universally popular. For each of the four, Republicans were more supportive than Democrats, often by wide margins. (The only one of the six for which Republicans weren’t more supportive was creating a way for undocumented immigrants to become citizens.)
Then YouGov conducted an experiment. Half of the respondents were asked to evaluate the bipartisan deal after being told about the components and the cost. The other half were given the same information — and told that Trump opposed it.
Overall, the group that wasn’t told about Trump’s opposition was more supportive of the bill, by 10 points. Among Republicans, though, support for the bipartisan deal was nearly cut in half. Just under two-thirds of Republicans who weren’t told that Trump opposed the bill offered their support for the plan as presented; only one-third supported it after learning of Trump’s opposition.
Partisan support for the bipartisan deal was about the same (a one-point difference) among those who weren’t told about Trump’s view. Among those who were informed about it, though, Democratic support also increased, leading to a 36-point gap between the parties.
An element of this, certainly, is that people often look to outside validators when considering complex questions. There’s a reason that people tend to vote along party lines; parties exist in large part to serve as validators of political viewpoints.
That doesn’t make it less significant that Republicans are willing to reject a proposal that includes four elements that they independently indicate they support. (Each of the four elements had support from at least three-quarters of Republicans before the Trump question.) Trump’s grip on his party has become increasingly literal, with (for example) his daughter-in-law now tasked with serving as co-chair for the Republican National Committee. But the rhetorical/political influence he retains over Republicans more broadly is also robust.
Trump got what he wanted. The situation at the border is — for his purposes — what it has been for months. It is still something to which he and his allies can point as November approaches.
In other words, it will likely remain true that the issue will be politically useful for Republicans.