The New York Times and Siena College released their latest poll over the weekend. It showed that among Kamala Harris supporters, 62 percent said they were “almost certain” to vote, while among those supporting Donald Trump, only 58 percent were “almost certain” to vote. That four-point gap in intensity reflects a challenge the Republican candidate faces in turning out his supporters, which helps explain why Trump raised immigration repeatedly during Tuesday’s debate, even when the questions asked had nothing to do with immigration.
That poll, which involved 1,695 likely voters, was conducted between September 3 and September 6. The margin of error is too confusing to explain, but the Times and Siena are fairly convinced they hit the sweet spot.
“What One Issue Is Most Important in Deciding Your Vote this November? There are a lot of questions asked in that poll, and I’m not sure I would have stayed on the line long enough to answer all of them had I been a respondent.
Only two are critical to this analysis, however, the first being: “What one issue is most important in deciding your vote this November?”
The leading issue was “the economy (including jobs and the stock market)”, the key voting issue for 26 percent of the likely voters polled.
Second place belonged to abortion at 15 percent, followed closely by immigration at 12 percent. All other responses scored in the single digits.
Interestingly, among the women surveyed, abortion was the single most important issue (22 percent), followed by the economy at 18 percent. Abortion would likely have been a bigger vote-getter had it not been for the fact that just 6 percent of men identified it as their most important issue.
Abortion was also the top “single most important issue” for two other demographic groups: those aged 18 to 29 (21 percent of whom chose it) and Black voters (18 percent of whom said abortion was their main concern). By contrast, just 15 percent of each group, respectively, stated the economy was their leading ballot-box issue.
There was a much-narrower gap — at least by sex — among likely voters who said immigration was their top voting issue: it was the choice of 14 percent of men and 11 percent of women. Compare that to the eight-point gap on the economy (26 percent men, 18 percent women) and the aforementioned 16-point differential between women and men over abortion.
Some 35 percent of those polled who said they were going to vote for Trump identified the economy as their main issue, whereas 28 percent of them said it was immigration. No other single issue came close for those Trump voters.
There were a lot of curious responses to this question, but one really stands out: Just 6 percent of those polled said “inflation” was their main issue, and those voters were almost twice as likely to choose a third-party candidate (15 percent) than Trump (8 percent; Harris is just getting 3 percent of inflation voters).
Keep in mind that respondents could only choose one issue in response on this question, and if that poll is correct, it means that even inflation-weary Trump voters are more concerned about immigration (and the economy generally) than they are about rising prices.
Would Kamala Harris or Donald Trump Do a Better Job on Immigration? The Times and Siena also asked respondents, “Regardless of how you might vote, tell me whether you trust Kamala Harris or Donald Trump to do a better job on each of” four issues: the economy; abortion; immigration; and “democracy”.
Harris has the clear edge on abortion, leading her Republican challenger by 15 points, 54 percent to 39 percent (boosted by strong support from Black and Hispanic voters, in particular, neither of whom trust Trump much on the issue), and on democracy.
The vice president leads the former president by five points on democracy (50 percent of likely voters trust Harris while 45 percent prefer Trump), but among white voters Trump has the advantage on this issue by eight points, 52 percent to 44 percent for Harris.
Harris is in a 13-point hole on the economy, however, with 42 percent of likely voters trusting her to handle pocketbook issues compared to 55 percent of respondents who prefer that Trump pilot the economy. Strong support for Harris from Blacks and “others” kept this issue from being more lopsided.
Which brings me to immigration. On that issue, 53 percent of respondents believe that Trump would do a better job, compared to 43 percent who preferred Harris. Don’t let that response fool you, however, because there are wide demographic differences on the issue.
Hispanics (53 percent) and Blacks (85 percent) prefer Harris’s handling of immigration to Trump’s by a significant margin (he received immigration support from 41 percent and 8 percent of those voters, respectively).
Among white voters with a college education, Harris has a 59 percent to 38 percent lead over Trump when it comes to addressing immigration. Given all that, where does Trump’s immigration support come from?
Here’s your answer: Whites without a college education much prefer Trump’s handling of immigration to Harris’, by a margin of 67 percent for the GOP candidate to 30 percent for the Democrat. And some 96 percent of those who said they’d vote for Trump trusted him more to handle immigration, while just 9 percent of Harris voters preferred Trump’s handling of immigration anyway.
The issue — as the Trump campaign likely sees it — is that while whites without a college degree made up a plurality (41 percent) of the electorate in the 2022 election, according to Pew Research, just 35 percent of them voted in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 contests.
By comparison, college-educated whites are less than a quarter (24 percent) of the electorate, but for those who have passed through the hallowed halls of academia, voting is a religion: 56 percent voted in all three past elections, and they made up more than a third of the electorate in 2022.
Trump needs to turn out those whites with no college if he has any hope of victory in November, and immigration and the economy are the two issues they really care about: 23 percent of this demographic claimed the economy was their key issue when voting, and 18 percent said that it was immigration — 41 percent in total.
Hammering the Biden-Harris record on the economy and immigration in the coming weeks offers the best chance for Trump and his running mate — Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio — to ensure a majority of whites without a college degree show up to vote.
Those voters already support Trump over Harris by a 66 percent to 30 percent margin in the Times/Siena poll, but that means nothing if only 35 percent of them cast ballots again this time.
Note that white non-college voters make up a majority of the electorate in certain swing states. In Pennsylvania, they are more than half (50.6 percent) of the electorate according to NPR; in Michigan, 52.8 percent of voters are non-college whites; and in Wisconsin, 58.7 percent of voting citizens are whites with no college education.
They’re called “turn-out” elections because the candidate who turns out more of his or her voters will win. On Tuesday night, Donald Trump brought up immigration at every opportunity for a simple reason: Non-college whites care about that issue, and if Trump expects to prevail on election night, he needs their votes.