Pro-immigrant messages could move undecided voters in swing states
July 27, 2020
Sixty-eight percent of undecided voters in battleground states support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and could be convinced by pro-immigrant policies, according to a poll from an immigrant rights group.
The poll, conducted for the National Immigration Law Center's Immigrant Justice Fund, found 70 percent strongly or somewhat support ending family separation at the southern border. And when using pro-immigrant messaging, Joe Biden’s favorability rose by 15 percentage points with persuadable and likely voters in the key swing states and his unfavorable rating went down 25 points.
Similarly, 77 percent support strengthening workplace protections for all workers, including immigrants, and 60 percent somewhat or strongly support ending funding for President Donald Trump’s border wall extension.
The poll sampled 800 likely voters, including 600 persuadable voters — those neither supporting likely Democratic nominee Biden nor Trump — in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The group oversampled likely Black and Latino voters to study them more closely.
Because the poll was conducted online with respondents who opted in, there is no margin of sampling error.
The NILC Immigrant Justice Fund plans to launch a campaign for the first time in a presidential election year. The campaign will target undecided voters on immigration policy and include digital ads in selected states. It is expected to launch by mid-August. The group aims to spend up to $3 million on the effort.
“Democrats are afraid to lean in” on immigration policy during elections, said Marielena Hincapié executive director of the Immigrant Justice Fund. “In fact, they don't have a choice with Trump.”
Trump is "scapegoating immigrants to distract from his leadership and his failures over the last four years,” Hincapié continued. “We realized that we actually needed to step up our own involvement in the political and electoral process and go beyond policy and legal advocacy.”
Trump recently took a step to remove undocumented immigrants from being counted on the census. Trump’s also sought to reduce foreign workers in the country and said his administration will try again to end the popular protections for immigrants who came the the country illegally as children, known as Dreamers.
Pro-immigrant messages that focus on uniting the country and the economy were the most effective, according to the poll. And immigrant doctors and nurses were the strongest messengers, followed by teachers and Dreamers, according to a memo by ALG Research, which conducted the poll and has worked for Biden during the 2020 race.
Biden has amped up his outreach to Latinos in key states like Arizona and Florida in recent weeks, hiring a Latino polling firm and launching TV ads. Biden didn’t do targeted appeals to Hispanics during the primary.
Biden is leading Trump in Arizona by 4 points and in Florida by 5 points, according to a recent CNN poll.
Source: https://www.politico.com/
