President Joe Biden may want to sign bipartisan legislation to fix the issue at the southern border, but a majority of swing state voters blame him for the border crisis, a new Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll found.
Six in 10 swing-state voters — 61 percent — say Biden is responsible for the surge in migrants at the US-Mexico border. Only 30% blamed the Trump administration and 38% blamed congressional Republicans.
The poll showed former President Donald Trump leading Biden across the seven swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan by an average of six points.
A majority of voters in the seven swing states, 52%, say they trust Trump to handle immigration, compared to 30% for Biden. Additionally, voters in those states say immigration is the “single most important issue” to them in November (13%) behind the economy (36%).
The new poll comes as a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress are on the verge of striking a deal with the Biden administration that would enact sweeping new border restrictions. If passed, it would become the first major bipartisan change of the immigration system since the 1990s.
However, Trump is urging Congressional Republicans to kill the deal and prevent Biden from securing a legislation victory in an election year.
“Only make a deal that is PERFECT ON THE BORDER,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people.”
On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) denied that his resistance to a bipartisan deal is not an attempt to help Trump in his presidential campaign.
“No,” Johnson said. That’s absurd. We have a responsibility here to do our duty.”
Democrats have accused Trump and Republicans of rejecting any border deal so that they can run on the issue in 2024 and avoid giving Biden a win.
