Likely Midterm Voters Repeatedly Say Immigration Is Biggest Priority, Tax Reform One of the Least

Likely voters have repeatedly told pollsters that immigration is their biggest priority heading into the 2018 midterm elections, while tax cuts are one of the least important issues.

While the Republican establishment is attempting to run their re-election campaigns on tax cuts, Republican voters and swing voters have said tax cuts are not their top priority but rather wage-boosting cuts to immigration.

In a March poll, swing voters were asked, “What is the most important issue to you in deciding how to vote in this year’s midterm election,” Independents say immigration is their third most important issue. Meanwhile, taxes are dead last as an issue for swing voters.

Likewise, half of swing voters at the time, 50 percent, said the GOP tax cuts that were passed last year have “no impact” on their midterm election vote.

The March poll found that Republicans say immigration is more important than taxes, healthcare, and gun policy when it comes to their vote in the midterm elections. The economy is the only issue that is as much of a priority for Republican voters as immigration.

A month before, Republican voters told pollsters that reducing immigration to the U.S. was a bigger priority than repealing and replacing Obamacare, destroying ISIS, and passing an infrastructure bill.

The only issue that outpaced reducing immigration levels as the biggest priority for Republican voters was stimulating American jobs, which can be directly tied to immigration.

For Trump voters, reducing immigration to the country is more important than repealing and replacing Obamacare, passing tax reform, and even building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to help stem illegal immigration.

Republican voters said again in March that reducing immigration was a bigger priority for them than tax cuts, repealing Obamacare, getting the U.S. out of the Iran Deal, destroying ISIS, and expanding family leave.

Immigration is so important to Republicans in March polling that it even surpassed the economy and jobs as being the biggest issue.

The latest polling from April revealed a similar trend among GOP likely midterm voters. When asked to rank the biggest priorities for the U.S., 47 to 40 percent of GOP voters say immigration and national security are the leading issues in their opinion.

Meanwhile, only 11 percent of GOP voters said taxes were the most important issue in the country, ranking lower than more obscure issues like school safety and defense spending.

About 45 percent of President Trump’s supporters say immigration is the most important issue in the country, while only 11 percent of Trump supporters say the same of taxes.

Not only are GOP voters and swing voters wanting immigration to be the leading issue of the midterm elections, rather than tax cuts, but both voting blocs are also vastly supportive of Trump’s plan to cut legal immigration levels in half.

Currently, the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants every year. Trump’s plan would cut legal immigration to the U.S. to raise the wages of America’s working and middle class.

In the latest poll by the Polling Company, a majority, 52 percent, of swing-voters said they wanted the 250,000 visas allotted to “chain migrants” — the foreign relatives of newly naturalized citizens — eliminated altogether rather than handed over to businesses to allow them to import an additional flood of foreign workers.

Harvard-Harris polling found that 66 percent of voters — or nearly two out of three — said they support a plan by the Trump administration to almost cut legal immigration in half by ending the process known as “chain migration,” as well as the Diversity Visa Lottery, and building a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Polling Company survey also revealed that nearly 70 percent of GOP likely midterm voters want legal immigration reduced to anywhere between zero to 250,000 admissions a year, a major reduction to current mass immigration levels that have led to poor job growth, stagnant wages, and increased public costs to offset the importation of millions of low-skilled foreign nationals.