Migration was the key issue for swing voters in the 2024 election, according to new data and analysis from BluePrint2024, a Democrat polling firm.
Data show that swing voters for Trump decided in the immediate days before the election, suggesting they really were true “swing” voters, whereas those who voted for Harris had made their minds up much earlier.
“Swing voters broke for Trump 52% versus just 38% for Harris,” the report states.
“Nearly half of swing voters who chose Trump made their decision in the final weeks, including 27% in the final days (15% in the last week, 12% on Election Day), suggesting they were genuinely up for grabs. This is substantially later than swing voters who broke for Harris—just 15% of whom decided in the last week or on Election Day.”
The report goes on to describe the important of immigration to swing voters who went with Trump.
“Among total swing voters who ultimately chose Trump, immigration was a key issue, with 77 percent of them believing that it was ‘extremely’ or ‘very accurate’ to say Democrats are ‘not tough enough on addressing the border crisis’ and 73 percent feeling the same way about Democrats ‘support[ing] immigrants more than American citizens.’”
Close to three-quarters of Trump’s swing voters agreed with the proposition that Democrats “want to take money from hard-working Americans and give it to immigrants”, that Democrats “don’t care about securing the border”, and that Democrats “have extreme ideas about immigration.”
The BluePrint report also notes that Democrat voters want the party to improve its immigration policies.
Democrat politicians have been quick to recognise that immigration was key to Kamala Harris’s thumping defeat on 5 November, although their focus seems to be largely on public perception rather than the actual realities for ordinary people of allowing millions to enter the country illegally.
“There’s a growing feeling among Democratic lawmakers that the Biden administration completely mismanaged the huge surge of migrants across the southern border and that this also hurt their party dearly,” The Hill reported.
“We destroyed ourselves on the immigration issue in ways that were entirely predictable and entirely manageable,” a Democratic senator told the Hill.
Many Democrat politicians believe one of Biden’s key mistakes was to lift Title 42, the emergency health order Trump put in place, while president, to block migrants entering the US to seek asylum. The lifting of Title 42 has allowed millions of migrants to enter the country and stay while their asylum applications were processed.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Trump was particularly successful in making Americans see how mass illegal immigration has knock-on effects they can feel in every aspect of their lives.
“Trump did this narrative—it wasn’t just anti-immigration—he connected it all up to the economy. ‘Housing prices are going up, you’re losing your job, wages,’” Schumer said.