On October 25, the New York Times released its last pre-election poll, largely reported on because it showed Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump tied at 48 percent apiece in the 2024 election. Read deeper, though, and you will find a more interesting — if less immediately salient — fact: A large swath of the electorate views “immigrants/ immigration” as a threat to American democracy. That’s an unfortunate but likely inevitable result of nearly four years of bad border policy.
That poll was conducted between October 20 and 23, and surveyed 2,516 likely voters, with a margin of sampling error of +/- 2.2 percentage points.
“What One Issue Is Most Important?” Before I get to that question, first note that respondents to that poll were asked: “What one issue is most important in deciding your vote this November for president?”
“The economy (including jobs and the stock market)” was the leading response, the choice of 27 percent of the likely voters polled. The economy is an evergreen issue in any election, so that was no surprise.
Tied for second were “abortion” and “immigration”, at 15 percent respectively.
There was a significant gender split on the importance of abortion: Nearly a quarter, 24 percent, of female respondents named it as their most important issue, while just 6 percent of male voters said the same.
That gender split was not as pronounced among respondents who identified immigration as their most important issue. It was the pick of 17 percent of male respondents and 13 percent of female ones (a four-point divide).
Put another way, there are likely many female respondents who are concerned about immigration, but not as concerned as they are about abortion. Conversely, more males likely have qualms about abortion (and/or access thereto), but are primarily focused on immigration.
For what it’s worth, there was also a mild gender split on the economy as a key issue, with 31 percent of men but “just” 24 percent of women saying it was their most important concern (a seven-point divide). That’s slightly larger than the gender split on immigration even when the larger number of voters mainly focused on the economy is considered.
Who Would Do a Better Job? Thereafter, the Times asked respondents: “Regardless of how you might vote, tell me whether you trust Kamala Harris or Donald Trump to do a better job on immigration?”
This was Trump’s best issue, with 54 percent of respondents saying he would do a better job compared to 43 percent who said Harris would (an 11-point divide).
Trump got to that 54 percent confidence rating even though half (50 percent) of women and college graduates and 56 percent of non-white voters believe that Harris would do a better job handling immigration.
That’s because an overwhelming proportion of male respondents — 63 percent — trusted Trump to do a better job on immigration than Harris would, as did 59 percent of white voters and 60 percent of respondents without a bachelor’s degree.
Tying those groups together, the poll reveals that two-thirds (67 percent) of white, non-college voters trust Trump more than Harris to deal with immigration.
Critically, there was a significant female bias built into the Times poll on this issue. It has long been accepted that women are more likely to vote in elections than men. In the 2020 presidential election, for example, 68.4 percent of registered females voted compared to 65 percent of registered males (a 3.4-point split).
There was a five-point gender split in the polling on the immigration question in the Times poll, however, as 52 percent of respondents were female but only 47 percent of males.
Among those who were asked which candidate would do a better job handling abortion, by contrast, there was just a three-point split, with 51 percent of respondents being women and 48 percent being men.
If — and this is a really big if because the Times/Siena poll is one of the best — more male voters are so concerned about immigration and so convinced that Trump is the only person who can address that issue that they actually show up to vote, it could tip the tight race in favor of the GOP candidate.
That’s likely why I see so many Trump or conservative PAC ads focusing on the border while I’m watching football in my (current) home swing state of North Carolina.
“The Current Threat to Democracy”. Which brings me to the question that I highlighted at the outset: “What one or two words do you think summarizes the current threat to democracy?”
That directly followed a separate question, which revealed that a whopping 76 percent of likely voters believe that “American democracy is under threat” — a rather remarkable response in and of itself.
During an 1837 address at the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Ill., Abraham Lincoln asked:
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
You’ve likely heard that quote paraphrased along the lines of “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves”, which is more or less the same thing, but then Lincoln never had a Twitter account.
Not to second-guess the Great Emancipator, but when I was young the sole threat to American democracy (and America itself) came from without: the Soviet Union. When Reagan called it the “evil empire”, everyone knew what he meant, and few here disagreed.
Today, the external threats to our nation are no more serious, but they are much more diffuse: China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, hackers, etc. If you follow U.S. media — regardless of the source and the source’s biases — however, you’d likely agree with the wisdom of Lincoln’s statement.
So, what is the source of that internal threat more than three-quarter of respondents fear our democracy is vulnerable to?
According to the Times’ poll, 21 percent say it’s “Donald Trump” himself. That includes 21 percent of white voters, 30 percent of Black voters, and 43 percent of Harris supporters, but just 15 percent of Hispanic voters and 19 percent of those of some “other” race.
All of which suggests that if you or your family came here recently from a place where the locals actually faced real internal threats, you’re less likely to take media-fueled ones here seriously.
But I digress. The second-leading “threat to democracy” identified was “the government/government corruption/non-specific politicians/leaders”, the choice of 14 percent of respondents, including 17 percent of men, 18 percent of likely Trump voters, and one quarter (25 percent) of voters who were neither white, Black, or Hispanic.
Even in Lincoln’s time, internal political squabbles, voter fraud, and corruption were each viewed as an existential threat (and only became more so after his death), so that, too, is likely an perennial response.
Which brings me to the third-leading choice: “immigrants/immigration”, identified as a current threat to democracy by 7 percent of those polled, including 8 percent of voters aged 45 and above, 11 percent of non-college whites, and 13 percent of likely Trump and GOP voters, respectively.
If there is one sleeper issue in the most heavily covered election in my lifetime, this is it, though I’m not completely sure what those responses mean.
Perhaps some “immigration is a threat to American democracy” voters are plain, flat-out xenophobes, but I seriously doubt that given that even 3 percent of Hispanics said that immigration is the key threat to our commonweal.
Based strictly on the distribution, I believe it’s more likely that some of these respondents aren’t buying the administration’s arguments that the “lawful pathways” tens of thousands of migrants without visas and without any right to come here are using to enter the country each month (CHNV Parole, the “CBP One app interview scheme”) are really “lawful”.
In reality, each is an executive branch effort to skirt congressional limits on the number of aliens allowed to enter lawfully, but that’s a rather fine and legalistic point lost on nearly everybody in the media. Maybe the people are savvier than the “experts”.
Another possibility — and the most likely answer — is that residents of cities and towns across the United States believe their elected officials don’t care about the impact the border surge has had on their schools, hospitals, housing, and fiscal costs, and the overall health of the U.S. economy.
While a few Americans expect their government to care for them from cradle to grave, I earnestly believe most don’t really expect much from their elected officials — aside from politicos understanding and sharing their concerns about the issues that are adversely affecting them, their families, and their pocketbooks.
It’s difficult to discern in the current administration’s immigration and border policies any concern for the needs — let alone desires — of the vast majority of taxpaying Americans, aside from bromides alluding to the fact that this is a “nation of immigrants” and that most of our ancestors came here from someplace else.
But as President Bill Clinton explained in his 1995 State of the Union address:
We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.
Until lately, the administration’s focus was almost exclusively on the needs of the migrants themselves, not on the interests of the United States, let alone the concerns of the voters. That may be fine in small doses, but it’s not a long-term recipe for electoral success, or for the prospects of the Republic.
The alleged threat Donald Trump poses to our democracy is Kamala Harris’s strong suit, so expect her to play it until Election Day. But understand that for a small but important portion of the electorate, uncontrolled immigration poses its own sort of danger to our country, too.