A majority of voters does not believe that the situation at the U.S. southern constitutes a national emergency, according to a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill.



Fifty-eight percent of respondents to the survey said that they do not see the current state of affairs at the U.S.-Mexico border as an emergency, while 42 percent said that it is.



ADVERTISEMENT

declared a national emergency earlier this month, casting the situation at the southern border as a crisis years in the making.

The declaration was intended to allow his administration to access billions of dollars in funding to build a wall that Congress has refused to approve.



According to the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, only 39 percent of U.S. voters said that Trump’s emergency declaration was appropriate, compared to 61 percent who said it was an inappropriate use of his authority.



At the same time, a majority of voters – 54 percent – said that the $1.3 billion in barrier construction funding provided by Congress last month was “adequate” to secure the southern border, the poll found. Forty-six percent said that it was “inadequate.”



Most voters – 55 percent – said that believe Congress was right in refusing to approve the $5.7 billion sum that Trump had requested to build his wall, while 45 percent said that lawmakers should have agreed to the president’s demand.



House Democratic leaders have scheduled a vote for Tuesday on a resolution condemning Trump’s emergency declaration.

But it’s uncertain whether the measure can pass in the Republican-controlled Senate, and the White House has threatened to veto the resolution if it makes it to Trump’s desk.



Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, said that Trump's emergency declaration has largely been met with skepticism by voters.



“Trump has fallen flat with the emergency declaration even as most voters would have liked to see the Democrats compromise with him,” Penn said. “Most oppose the emergency declaration and think $1.3 billion should be enough.”



The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll online survey of 1,792 registered voters was conducted from Feb. 19-20. The partisan breakdown is 37 percent Democrat, 32 percent Republican, 29 percent independent and 2 percent other.



The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll. The Hill will be working with Harvard/Harris Poll throughout 2019.



Full poll results will be posted online later this week. The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.