A new poll by VeraAction and Immigration Hub found that nearly two-thirds of voters say they are hearing more from Republicans on immigration issues, while just 16% say they are hearing more from Democrats.
The poll, conducted by Perry Andem, echoed other polls that found a growing number of voters believe Republicans will do a better job on immigration.
Among those polled, 44% said Republicans would do a better job on the issue, 36% said Democrats would do a better job, and 20% said neither party would do a better job on the issue or that both parties would do it the same way.
Voters who answered “both” or “neutral” on the issue were more likely to agree with the Democratic message than the Republican message, according to a polling memo reviewed by The Hill.
But few voters are listening to the Democratic message.
Case in point: 73% of respondents said they had heard about a link between new immigrants and crime, of which 54% said they had heard about it from a Republican and 11% said they had heard it from a Democrat.
New analysis from the Texas Department of Public SafetyThe Cato Institute announced the findings on Wednesday.Between 2013 and 2022, it found that undocumented immigrants were less likely to be arrested and convicted of murder than people born in the United States.
This is the latest research to suggest that immigrants (both legal and illegal) are less likely to commit crimes and therefore their presence reduces the overall crime rates of the communities they live in.
But Republicans have managed to frame the entire immigration issue by highlighting individual cases of crimes committed by immigrants.
Immigration advocates say this is a sign that Democrats are not speaking out enough on immigration or effectively countering Republican arguments.
According to a polling memo, voters responded to a hypothetical Democratic message criticizing the “scare tactics” in Republican messaging.
According to the memo, messages that humanize immigrants — “Like most of us, the vast majority of immigrant families are responsible people: mothers, fathers, children and grandparents fleeing danger. Like us, they are seeking safety, stability and the opportunity for a better life” — made both conservatives and older voters more likely to agree that “immigrants are fleeing danger, not causing it.”
The polling memo included results from two surveys conducted on YouGov from May 10 to 22. One survey was conducted among 1,000 registered voters nationwide, while the other surveyed 1,904 people with an oversample of Black, Hispanic, Asian American and Pacific Islander voters.
