One political issue North Carolinians agree on? Stronger border security, new WRAL poll shows
Ahead of the 2024 elections, North Carolina polling numbers show Democrats tend to agree with Republicans that stronger border security is needed. It comes as Democratic President Joe Biden has shifted to the right on immigration.
Posted — UpdatedMost North Carolinians, regardless of their political affiliation, want to see a stronger crackdown at the border between Mexico and the United States, according a WRAL News poll released Thursday.
Forty-six percent of adults statewide say they want to stop all crossings through the southern border. Another 32% say the federal government should take steps to reduce immigration from Central America and South America, but not go as far as a total shutdown. Just 12% said they think immigration policy should remain the same or be made less strict.
Last month Democratic President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump each made trips to the border; Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee for president again this year. Biden is also seeking reelection.
WRAL polling released earlier this week shows most North Carolina voters would prefer not to have a rematch of the 2020 election between Trump and Biden — but that immigration is one of the top issues for many voters statewide, and one that’s especially likely to motivate Republican voters this fall.
The WRAL poll, conducted in partnership with SurveyUSA between March 3 and March 9, has a credibility interval of 4.1 percentage points. A credibility interval is similar to margin of error but takes into account more factors and is considered by some pollsters to be a more accurate measurement of statistical certainty.
But when pressed on the issue, Democrats tended to agree with Republicans that stronger border security is needed, according to results released Thursday. The new results show 87% of Republicans said immigration across the southern border should be reduced or totally shut down, as did 71% of Democrats and 77% of unaffiliated voters.
“It looks like this is a winning issue for Republicans,” Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper said of calls for cracking down on immigration. “And it’s not as much of a losing issue among Democrats as, frankly, I thought it might be.”
National Democrats appear to be reaching similar conclusions. Biden’s trip to the border last month was one of several ways the president has been embracing a more conservative approach to immigration as he seeks reelection — despite having campaigned in 2020 on undoing some of Trump’s immigration policies, such as taking migrant children from their families at the border and sending them to live others.
Hispanic voters make up about 4% of all voters in North Carolina — a small group, but one that could still be influential in a state Trump won by just 1.5% of the vote in 2020.
Immigrant workers in the NC economy
The North Carolina Department of Commerce says immigration is necessary to keep the economy running.
The strong opposition to immigration from Central and South America is particularly notable in North Carolina, where the No. 1 industry — agriculture — is heavily reliant on immigrant labor from those parts of the world. About half of the foreign-born population in the state comes from Latin America, according to Census data.
Agriculture isn’t the only industry that attracts immigrant workers; the tech and biopharmaceutical industries do, too. Statewide, immigrants — whether here legally or not — make up about 8% of North Carolina’s population, up from less than 1% half a century ago.
A state commerce analysis of Census data shows immigrants and naturalized citizens in North Carolina are more likely to be employed or looking for work than native-born Americans, with 68.6% of the foreign-born population participating in the labor force compared with 59.8% of people born in America.
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