Migration Politics Boost Donald Trump in ‘Blue Wall’ Midwest States

Migration is a top-ranked issue for voters in the battleground “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, just as it was when President Donald Trump triumphed in 2016, according to a poll by the New York Times.

Migration is the most important issue for 13 percent of voters in the three states, just behind abortion at 15 percent, and the economy at 22 percent, said the Siena College poll. Eleven percent of swing-voting independents named migration is their top issue, according to the poll, which was taken from August 5-9.

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Even after downplaying the painful economic impact of migration, it is the most important issue for 16 percent of voters in Pennsylvania, where Donald Trump leads Kamala Harris by three points.

Migration is the top issue for 11 percent of the voters in Michigan where Trump lags by three points.

In Wisconsin, it is the top issue for 12 percent of registered voters, where Harris leads by four points, 50 percent to 46 percent.

The issue helps Trump in all three states. The poll asked voters if they “trust Kamala Harris or Donald Trump to do a better job” on immigration, giving Trump leads of roughly 51 to 46 percent, with a trust score of 55 percent among independents.

Notably, 31 percent of blacks in the three states said they trust Trump over Harris on migration.

In July 2016, Breitbart News described what would be Trump’s road to his shock victory:

Midwest respondents are far more likely to agree with a statement saying that “immigrants today are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health care” than were respondents in the South, West or Northeast, according to the July survey by Morning Consult and Vox.com.

The New York Times poll matches other surveys showing rising public opposition to legal and illegal migration — despite the wall of sentimental, pro-migration coverage from establishment media sites.

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Unfortunately, the poll split immigration from economic issues, despite migration’s huge impact on wages, housing, and inflation.

Trump and his campaign are hitting that issue. “Housing costs are skyrocketing, absolutely skyrocketing because we have 15 million new migrants,” Trump said in an Arizona speech in June. “We have no place to put them, and that number is growing so that we have absolutely no place.”

But the New York Times poll did reveal a huge split by economic class.

On the immigration trust question, non-college whites split 60 percent for Trump and 38 percent for Harris.

That 3:2 ratio was reversed among whites with college degrees: They split for Harris 58 percent to 38 percent for Trump.

That split testifies to the pocketbook impact of migration, which is clearly visible to the many blue-collar families who are dealing with President Joe Biden’s flood of migrant workers, renters, and consumers.

So far, Trump has not offered an immigration-related pitch tuned for white-collar Americans — despite their vast loss of jobs, careers, and wealth to the roughly 1.2 million H-1B visa workers now in U.S. jobs that have been outsourced by the Fortune 500 companies and their investors.

That outsourcing damage is especially hard for young graduates, many of whom are losing first-rung job opportunities to foreign graduates.

That white-collar immigration pitch was also missing in the 2020 election, even when Trump held rallies in Pennsylvania.

However, Trump’s 2024 platform does promise to “stop outsourcing, and turn the United States into a manufacturing superpower.”

Trump’s limited advantage on migration, however, is offset by Harris’s advantage among women — and especially among non-working women and single women. For example, on the immigration trust question, men backed Trump by 61 percent to 35 percent, while women backed Harris by 55 percent to 43 percent. Overall, 32 percent of women and just 16 percent of men said that “the changes that Kamala Harris would make would be good for the country.”

The poll did not show any data about married and unmarried people.

The newspaper’s Siena College polls have an error margin of just over 4 points because they included roughly 650 people in each state. The polls were conducted from August 5 -9.