Here's an interesting thing. A recent Emerson College poll asked voters what their most important issue was. Very standard stuff. But here are the replies from Trump supporters:
Trump supporters literally care about only two things: immigration and the economy. Every other issue is background noise. By contrast, here are Biden supporters:
The economy is #1 again—I think there's a national law that the economy always has to be #1—but after that there's a much more normal distribution. Democracy, abortion, health care, and immigration all rank higher than the #3 issue from Trump supporters.
Aside from the economy, then—which is always with us—it appears that Republicans are essentially single-issue voters on immigration these days.
What conservatives are really voting for is 'fuck you!'
It's the only thing they have to say on any topic, and they want to see this expressed in any way they can get away with.
"It's the racism and bigotry, stupid!"
Yep.
It's very shrill and uncivil to express obvious facts like that.
Come to think of it, Republicans don't like facts generally.
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Maybe Republican farmers, construction contractors, meatpackers, and golf course owners should stop paying illegal immigrants to remain here.
Of course then, they’d have to hire legal American workers with all kinds of legal protections that would cost them . . . the profits they’ve accustomed themselves to exploiting from slave labor.
This whole multicultural melting pot idea has been pretty thoroughly rejected by people all over the world.
“Public resentment at immigration has become a hot issue in the run-up to the May 29 vote.”
What country could that be?
“The accounts turn a rare spotlight on the dire conditions endured by many Africans who arrive here searching for of a better life in the continent’s most advanced economy, and the hostility they say they’ve encountered from South African authorities as well as bands of vigilantes who blame foreigners for taking jobs and services away from local people.”
Even the Africans hate other Africans! 😂
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/safrica-election-fire/
“Last month, the government published proposals in its official gazette to scale back its commitments to, or withdraw from, the United Nations refugees convention and related treaties, to “deter economic migrants who come to South Africa disguising as asylum seekers”, a move it said would free its hand in promptly rejecting asylum claims it deemed bogus.“
People voting against their own self-interest, chapter 8 billion.
FYI, they call it "voting their principles."
Lol. For the billionth time, an angry bigot thinks hes being original by laughing at Africans who share his bigotry.
And yet the melting pot continues. Screech and shreik all you want, but youve been losing this argument for a long time now.
Pretty much.
It's worth remembering that Africa is a continent, and a large one, not a country. In some ways, it's similar to Europe, in that it's divided into a large number of geographically fairly small countries. In Europe "the wogs begin at Calais", the Serbs hate the Croats, the Lithuanians hate the Russians, etc. It should come as no surprise that the various African countries or ethnic groups don't always get along with each other, any more than it is a surprise that Americans from the USA don't always get along with Americans from Mexico and points south.
Wanting to control your country's borders is not an exclusively American desire. However "hate" other Africans is a considerable exaggeration.
Well, the unemployment rate in South Africa is 42%, not 3.9%.
What do third party/uncommitted voters care about?
I would have thought housing would be higher, given all the online lamentations I see. But maybe that's really a small fraction of people, since the majority of US adults own a home, and once you add in the renters who live in cheap flyover country, perhaps there's only a fraction of people are on the coasts who think the rent and the down payment are too damn high.
If Republicans actually cared about immigration, they would vote for Democrats, because it's clear that Democratic politicians want to do something about it, and Republican politicians don't. Immigration is just the tribal shibboleth du jour. The real policy position is "whatever it is, I'm against it."
The issue of immigration may be performative for some but not to Donald Trump and Stephan Miller and their evil minions. They are planning on deporting 15 million people. When Trump is “President” the time to protest will have passed.
"They are planning on deporting 15 million people."
That is not what Trump is planning. This is a cover for creating his own personal army, so he can use it to suppress all the population, not only immigrants.
I don’t disagree. That is the overall plan.
He couldn’t get a Republican Congress to fund his wall, I don’t think he could get the funding to massively expand ICE. I suppose he could claim an ‘invasion’ to justify using the military?
He will just ignore the Congress and go ahead with creating a personal army. Who is going to stop him?
He already said he will be a dictator on day one to get things started. Stephen Miller is talking openly about it.
https://www.truthnetwork.com/show/the-charlie-kirk-show-charlie-kirk/72387/
I don’t think people get how serious this is. Things will get very ugly very fast.
He was able to find masked and weirdly de badged federal officers willing to beat, render, and kill protesters.
The guy who decades ago paid a million dollar fine for illegally employing illegal immigrants to build Trump Tower and who as president illegally paid illegal immigrants to scrub the disgusting orange goo from his shirt collars is not going to deport anyone—just as he didn’t when he was president.
He and his fellow billionaires exploit illegal immigrants for slave labor—his inane lies are just another ridiculous heap of bullshit that the dumb goobers who vote for him swallow.
i'd like to see a poll of republicans regarding mandatory use of e-verify
and a follow up question asking what the prison sentence should be for anyone hiring workers without using it
The rank and file would be enthusiastic. The politicians who need donors, not so much.
While e verify, in theory, has a lot of merits the reality is far different. The e verify database is error filled. The US lacks biometric IDs. The penalties for non compliance is not significant. Mandating more use of the current e verify system, is not a meaningful solution.
An e verify like solution that actually worked, unlike what we have, might be impactful practically and politically.
Note, I think one would have to nearly start over, to get a e verify solution that is accurate and effective.
it's broken because republicans don't care if it's accurate
otoh, republicans want the passport system to be accurate, and it is
Do you have a citation for your claims that the e-verify system is riddled with errors and inefficient?
KenSchulz - Here are a few. And or talk to anyone who uses the system regularly. Big issue, the databases the system uses are not accurate...
https://www.cato.org/blog/serious-problems-e-verify
https://www.experian.com/blogs/employer-services/pros-cons-using-e-verify/
https://www.aclu-ia.org/en/news/error-prone-expensive-e-verify-wont-fix-our-broken-immigration-system
I won’t read CATO. The Experian article has no data whatsoever, it contains general statements that databases ‘may’ contain errors. Sigh. The ACLU article asserts this:
Wait, what proportion of that 1% was correctly classified as ineligible? The writer is assuming that not one ineligible person attempted to get a job at an employer using e-verify.
Those citations seem woefully out of date.
We are working on putting together a policy on that since it's a totally new issue not ever heard about before ever. It will be an awesome solution and will be ready in two weeks.
Wow! What about the big R obsession with the alternative sexualities? Is that buried somewhere in the "other' or the "education" bars? It seemed SO IMPORTANT just a few months ago!
Amazing how abortion has dropped since they realized it was a ballot box loser.
Immigration has always been the thing that most animates Trumpers, they don't want a solution. They want the borders closed and no further immigration allowed, those extra people drive up housing costs, clog up roads, and take jobs.
There is no way that abortion is the most important issue for only 1% of Republicans.
Unless after Roe they figure its not longer important, which seems unlikely since that's the main thing they are actually legislating, that and anti LGBTQ legislation.
yes, they got Roe overturned, so it is now no longer an issue for them. That is more than plausible, it seems self apparent.
Illegal immigration? Or immigration generally? Which did Emerson College ask about? And which issue animates GOP voters?
The distinction might split respondents into, as HRC might say, two baskets.
I hate these kinds of surveys. The questions are proxies for unspeakable thoughts and create a false prioritization. Actually, I hate almost all polls; they're so dumb in how they attempt to quantify opinion.
There is only one issue and two sides. The "down" side is in favor of unilateral control of other people's lives. The "up" side is in favor of mutual constraint based on the simple principle that the intrinsic value of any one human life is equal to the intrinsic value of every other human life.
Regardless of cause, in 2024, if you support the Republican Party, then you are explicitly on the down side, and if you otherwise don't support Biden/Harris, then you are implicitly on the down side.
Saying you care about immigration and/or the economy and saying you are voting Republican is like saying you love justice because you love having the power to force people to accept your "do as I say and not as I do" attitude (Did I get that right Justice Sammy?).
The ironic thing is that the President has relatively little influence on the economy. I mean, he/she can screw it up with nutso policies like slapping 10% tariffs on all imports, but generally the economy does what the economy does. It's not like either of these two guys is planning any nutso economic policy like that, tight?
Here's my question -- why? How is this affecting their lives? Not in some hypothetical "illegal immigration may depress wages by 2%". What are they experiencing that concerns them so much? If you live in LA, sure, maybe, but Joe Smith from Nebraska, what in his life experience is screaming "Immigration is the problem?"
Wages are up. Unemployment is low. Housing sucks -- in certain areas, but I think it's a stretch to pin that on immigration, and lots of these voters have houses, so a tight market benefits them (kind of.) Inflation? Again, you really think immigration is the cause? So what is it? Seeing more dark faces in town? Could you even tell?
Good questions, and my answer would be that when Rs talk about immigration, they're talking about a whole bunch of other things that don't get much traction as separate issues but for them are caused by immigration or linked to it.
For Rs, immigration = crime, immigration = drugs, immigration = urban violence and being afraid of big cities, immigration = election cheating, immigration = suppressed wages, immigration = wealth inequality, immigration = housing shortage, immigration = hospital crowding and closures, and so on. Ask most R-leaning people a poll question about immigration and they think of all these things at once and probably more, and they won't worry about what the link might be in real life.
This is what the right-wing mediaverse and R politicians do, and do very well-- visually and rhetorically tie immigration to anything and everything that could be upsetting to their constituency, never mind whether there could even be any logical or demonstrable link. Totally vicious and fictitious. But it's what separates the marks from their money and gets them to the polls, as well as keeping them up at night and reinforcing their tribal solidarity.
One could build the rethuglican bar graph using the percent of FUX news stories .
It has been obvious for decades that large and rapid demographic change leads to social instability. Guess what? A lot of people are still racists/culturists, so it's no surprise that mass immigration of all types (not *illegal immigration* as Kevin calls it) would, after half a century, bring us to this state of affairs. Liberals, or whatever you want to call them, were willfully blind to the obvious consequences - which has been demonstrated for centuries throughout the world. Immigration is fine if it's measured and the demographic change is slow.
You want faster demographic change? Then first eliminate racism/culturalism. Otherwise you end up in a situation like today's.
And once they win in November, repubs will solve the border crisis once and for all with a tax cut for billionaires and corporations....
^This!
Disheartening that "climate" appears nowhere among the top 9 issues for either group. For me, climate is 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6, with democracy 2nd, abortion 7th, healthcare 8th, and housing 9th.
It's odd that Democrats have a reputation as being soft on immigration, after Obama deported 3 million people, compared to 2 million under Bush, and issued record fines against businesses for hiring the undocumented (by a multiple of 15 over GW Bush)
Democracy is #1 because without it we will be unable to address climate change. Obama was called “deporter in chief” by many. Yet Trump’s main issue was “build the wall”. He was able to make it an issue because as others have said, hate is the real #1 issue with republicans.
"Democracy is #1 ..."
.. and #2 and #3 and #4 and #5.
If Trump wins he will mess up all other issues.
The worst thing that can happen about claimate change action is Trump winning.
The worst thing that can happen about race relations is Trump winning.
The worse thing that can happen about equality is Trump winning.
And so on.
Thank you Brandon for the mention. I had the same thought and was equally puzzled that climate change as the definitive threat to our western capitalist way of life did not come up as an issue. If climate change really isn't an issue at all in the US, then hope is suffering a major blow.
And climate not getting mentioned once on either side (unless covered by Other, which is just as depressing) *sigh*
Both sides may say the economy is their first issue, but what they think that means and whether they are looking at the facts and management of the actual economy or believing the lies told by Conald and the rest are not the same thing at all.
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