President Joe Biden has experienced a 14 percent net swing against his immigration approval rating over the last two weeks amid the migrant surge on the southern border, a Morning Consult/Politico poll released Wednesday revealed.
The survey, taken March 26-29 among 2,043 registered voters, showed 49 percent of voters disapproving of Biden’s handling of immigration issues, rising eight points since mid-March. Forty percent approve, down from 46 percent in mid-March.
While a majority of Democrats approve of Biden’s handling of immigration issues, 70 percent, that is down five percent from weeks earlier. His disapproval also rose six points among Democrats since mid-March, crawling from 14 percent to 20 percent. Disapproval among Republicans remains high at 84 percent, up from 78 percent last month.
The survey also showed a majority of voters, 53 percent, blaming the surge on the southern border on the Biden administration’s changes from the Trump-era migration policies, such as nixing the Remain in Mexico policy and resuming Catch and Release. A majority of Republicans and independents agree, but a plurality of Democrats, 45 percent, attribute the surge to a “seasonal uptick … ahead of deadly summer heat.”
The survey’s margin of error is +/- 2 percent.
The findings coincide with a recent YouGov survey showing 69 percent of independents blaming the surge on Biden’s immigration policies, as Breitbart News detailed:
66 percent of adults give most, some, or a little blame to Biden, while just 19 percent say he serves no blame. Sixteen percent said they were not sure.
However, the numbers are worse for Biden among the swing-voting independents who decide elections.
Thirty-two percent of swing-voting independents give Biden “most of the blame,” while 16 percent give him “some blame” and 21 percent give him a “little blame.”
Former acting ICE Director Tom Homan said on Fox News this week that the current surge was largely “preventable.”
“Now the Biden administration, the incoming administration was warned, they said if you if you end these programs, we’re going to see a surge that you’ve never seen before,” he said, explaining they were “briefed by leadership” at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“And so they knew this would happened [sic]. … They knew what they were doing. Again, this isn’t incompetence; this isn’t you know bad management, this is open borders,” Homan explained.
“They designed an open borders agenda and that men and women of Border Patrol feel abandoned because they’re no longer enforcing the law, they’re just facilitating illegal entry at the instruction of the administration,” he added.