Even as GOP presidential candidates beat the drum of "border security first" and continually call Obama's immigration actions "executive amnesty," a new AP-GfK poll finds that many Republican voters no longer think of immigration as a deal-breaker. Thomas Beaumont and Emily Swanson
report:
"This country has always had open doors," said Dean Talmadge, a Republican from suburban Seattle. "I don't just have a problem with immigration, as long as they are here, working and following the rules."
That's a sentiment shared by most Americans, who according to the poll, favor a path to citizenship by 53 to 44 percent. It did not make a significant difference if respondents were asked instead whether they supported a path to legal status short of citizenship: 50 percent said they favored it and 48 percent opposed.
In fact, recent data from the Public Religion Research Institute found that "
at least 52 percent" of Americans
in every state favor a path to citizenship.
On Obama's executive actions providing deportation relief for up to five million immigrants, 6 in 10 Americans and 4 in 10 Republicans support the policy. Those are the programs that Hillary Clinton wholeheartedly endorsed Tuesday, creating a stark contrast between her and every GOP candidate in the field.
But even a majority of Republicans either support Obama's policies or say they could vote for a candidate that supports them.
Three-quarters of Republicans say they would prefer to vote for a candidate who would undo it, but a combined 55 percent would either prefer to support a candidate who would keep it in place or could imagine themselves voting for such a candidate.
Even among conservative Republicans, nearly half – 47 percent – could at least imagine voting for a candidate who would keep the action in place.
So GOP candidates should just keep pounding away at those anti-immigrant talking points while Clinton embraces the position that not only has majority support, but will also energize Latinos in key states like Florida, Colorado, and Nevada.
Three-quarters of Hispanics in the poll say that they would prefer to support a candidate who would keep Obama’s executive action in place, and a majority – 53 percent of Hispanics overall – say they definitely could not support a candidate who wants to undo it.