Are immigration issues making voters more conservative?

(NewsNation) — The migrant crisis came into sharper relief on the national front over the past year after governors from border states began bussing hundreds of thousands of migrants to traditionally blue “sanctuary cities” like New York, Chicago, Denver and others, plunging them into crisis in turn. The result has been a shifting of political sentiment as local Democratic leaders spar with President Joe Biden over the handling of the border.

In a statement that was surprising for a Democratic elected official, New York City Mayor Eric Adams warned back in September the migrant crisis would “destroy” his city. The city, at that point, had spent about $2 billion caring for the migrants and projected spending $12 billion by 2025 if there was no federal funding. The mayor even refused to meet with Biden amid repeated requests for federal aid and more recently announced widespread budget cuts as the city continues to grapple with an increasingly expensive migrant crisis.

A similar situation is unfolding in Chicago where migrants spent months camping at Chicago O’Hare International Airport and on the floors of police stations. The city has had to scramble to figure out safe housing options amid the harsh Chicago winters, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced an additional $160 million last week, earmarked to help resettle migrants and to winterize the makeshift shelters.

Gallup polling suggests there has been a noticeable drop in American support for immigration over the past few years.

In May of 2020, 77% of Americans said that immigration was a “good thing” for the country; when Gallup asked the same question in the summer of 2023, that number had dropped to 68%.

At the same time, the percentage of people who said it was a “bad thing” rose from 19% to 27% in the same timeframe.

Additionally, 41% wanted immigration to be decreased from the level it was in May 2023, up from 28% who wanted it decreased in May 2020.

For Republicans, this shift to the right may benefit their party. Recent polling found that former president Trump leads Biden on the issue of immigration among voters in a range of battleground states.

Meanwhile, in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, which has an 83% Latino population and has been a Democrat stronghold for years, the frustrations of the border crisis and inflation have left some thinking of switching sides in the upcoming election.

Prior to the 2022 midterm elections, Democratic commentator John Judis sat in on a focus group session run by a progressive group that was filled to the brim with voters who had backed President Joe Biden during the 2020 election but were unsure about how they’d vote that year.

What Judis found was that the organizers of the focus group were shocked by one response in particular from the group.

“They (were) really taken aback by their sympathy for Abbott and DeSantis,” Judis said in an interview, referring to the Texas and Republican governors who chose to bus asylum seekers to northern cities.

The focus group was frustrated at President Biden’s border policies — one sign of many that some voters may be shifting to the right on immigration issues.

Judis, who is known for his book with analyst Ruy Teixeira predicting an emerging Democratic majority, argued that the main thing voters are concerned about is not diversity or immigration overall but chaos and confusion in the process.

“It’s the lawlessness that offends people to a great extent,” he said, arguing that addressing the issue of unauthorized immigration and employment could help win back voters.

Democratic strategists think that their party should push back hard on the issue.

Jim Kessler, a longtime staffer for Democratic politicians who today is executive vice president for policy at the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way, argued that they should change their messaging.

“They need to tell their story that they care about the border and security. Their record at the border is a lot better than what conservative media shows,” Kessler argued, pointing to thousands of apprehensions of unauthorized immigrants at the border.