Harvard-Harris Poll on Immigration Shows Support for Trump Agenda

President Donald Trump Approval Equals or Surpasses Past Presidents

At 47%, President Donald Trump’s approval is the highest it’s been in over a year. It has also been trending upward since the Spring of 2018.  Despite a steady pounding by news organizations, the President’s approval on a number of issues has climbed including his approval numbers on stimulating jobs (58%), his handling of the economy (57%), fighting terrorism (57%), foreign affairs (47%), and administering the government (45%) are at the highest recorded by this poll.

Meanwhile, 47% of voters express confidence in the direction of the economy (compared to 39% who say it is off on the wrong track), and 69% believe the U.S. economy is strong today.

Immigration

While the nation’s majority of news outlets are once again exaggerating the left’s support for illegal aliens, according to the Harvard-Harris poll, American voters who are sympathetic to immigrant families being separated at the border, also told pollsters that they are demanding stronger border security (“build the wall”) and increased enforcement by the Homeland Security Department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

While respondents say they do not believe that illegal alien families should to be separated when they cross illegally (88%), they also say that they support the Trump administration’s late policy reversal, allowing families to stay together (71%), even if it was done unilaterally through an executive order. However, most respondents were not aware that both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama conducted their border operations in the same manner — separating the adults and children for temporary housing. In fact, if a citizen relied on the establishment news media (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) he or she would never know that Obama separated far more children from their parents or guardians.

What the Democrats and their “useful idiots” in the news media will avoid reporting to the American people is the fact that:

• A majority of voters want immigration reform (73%) and secure borders (76%).
• Voters want stricter enforcement of immigration laws (70%).
• Voters support prosecuting immigrants who cross the border illegally (53%) and sending these immigrants home (64%).
• A majority (55%) also stand against so-called “catch and release” policies.

Russia Investigation

Again we find that the Democrats and their media cohorts have misstated the reality of the so called Trump-Russia Collusion Investigation being pursued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

According to the Harvard-Harris survey, only 35% of voters believe that Mueller has found evidence of collusion. In fact, over half of the responding voters believe the special counsel should wind down the investigation on collusion (53%).

In light of the Inspector General report, they believe the FBI should be investigated on how it handled the Trump-Russia probe (58%). While 67% percent say there is evidence of bias in the FBI, and 64% would like to see a special counsel appointed to investigate the investigators.

The survey was conducted by The Harris Poll online within the United States from June 24-25, 2018 among 1,448 registered voters. The results reflect a nationally representative sample. Results were weighted for age within gender, region, race/ethnicity, marital status, household size, income, employment, and education where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

The poll was supervised by Harvard Professor of Government and CAPS Faculty Director Stephen Ansolabehere, Mark Penn, and Dritan Nesho. Harvard Assistant Professor of Government Jon Rogowski contributed to this month’s CAPS-Harris Poll. Stephen Ansolabehere has 25 years’ experience conducting survey research and experimental research in the field of political science.

Mark Penn is a former presidential pollster and has 40 years of polling experience. Dritan Nesho is a fellow at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science and has over 11 years of polling and data analytics experience.