Politics

Polling Show Trump’s Newfound Support Of Amnesty Is A Betrayal To His Base

Photo by Ralph Freso/Getty Images

Alex Pfeiffer White House Correspondent
Font Size:

President Donald Trump’s backing of legislative amnesty for illegal immigrants who arrived in America as minors is a betrayal to the voters who propelled Trump to his primary victory.

A March 2016 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that 52 percent of Republicans overall support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Looking at voters who supported Trump in the primary, however, paints a different picture.

An August 2016 article from The Atlantic highlighted how Trump voters backed the premise that all illegal immigrants should be “deported to [their] home country.”

The authors, Ronald Brownstein and Leah Askarinam, wrote, “Voters who supported deportation voted for Trump in such commanding numbers that they provided a majority of his votes in every state where the exit poll asked the question except New York and Wisconsin.”

They continued, “In such key early contests as New Hampshire and South Carolina, Trump drew about three-fifths of his total support from voters who backed mass deportation.”

“If Trump did not consolidate such support from voters who backed deportation, the race might have unfolded very differently. In Trump’s critical early victories in South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Arkansas, Illinois, North Carolina, and Missouri, exit polls showed that he trailed behind either Ted Cruz or Rubio among the majority of voters who supported legal status for undocumented immigrants,” The Atlantic concluded.

Whit Ayres, who was a pollster for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, told The Atlantic, “If [Trump] had had an immigration position like Jeb’s or Marco’s, he would have had a very difficult time generating the plurality that he generated.”

Trump, however, now wants Congress to “legalize” the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protects roughly 800,000 illegal immigrants from deportation.

It is unclear what this piece of legislation would entail. White House legislative director Marc Short has said the administration is so far not “entertaining” the idea of a path to citizenship.

Yet, there appears to be bipartisan consensus developing around the idea of giving the so-called Dreamers a path to citizenship.

Democrats support such a proposal. A Senate bill introduced Monday by Republicans designed to appeal to conservatives would give these 800,000 or so illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, but it would not allow them to sponsor family members to the United States.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel