Chris White, DCNF

Voters who supported President Donald Trump in 2016 but flipped during the 2018 midterms believe Democrats should have accepted the president’s immigration deal, according to a poll published Tuesday.

A plurality of voters in areas where Trump won by large margins two years ago but flipped Democratic in 2018 approve of the president’s job performance, 49 percent to 48 percent, a Public Opinion Strategies survey conducted for the Republican National Committee found.

Voters in New York, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia and New Jersey believe that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should have accepted Trump’s immigration compromise deal to re-open the government. Some of these areas supported Trump by double-digit margins in 2016.

Researchers tested responses from subjects on costs, support from border agents, and the national security threat illegal immigration poses. Public Opinion Strategies conducted a survey of 800 registered voters with a margin of error of 3.4 percent on Jan. 24-26, 2019.

“After they hear this series of statements, voters in these DEM-held congressional districts move toward supporting the president’s border barrier as they shift away from Pelosi,” the survey noted.

Most of those surveyed (50 to 43 percent) believe Democrats should have accepted Trump’s offer of three years of protection for dreamers in exchange for $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall. Voters in these Democratically held districts support “building a border wall or barrier to improve security between the U.S. and Mexico” by a 53 to 43 percent margin.

Trump’s immigration compromise received support from some unlikely sources. The Washington Post, for one, pushed Pelosi and the Democrats to take Trump up on his offer, if for no other reason than to provide aid to those who came here through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

WaPo noted in a Jan. 20 editorial reasons why Pelosi should rebuke the president’s most recent offer to temporarily extend protections for the so-called Dreamers. But the paper eventually explained that taking the deal would ultimately help the Dreamers.

“He should not be rewarded for having taken the government hostage. Any piece of a wall would reinforce his hateful, anti-immigrant rhetoric,” WaPo noted at the time. “He’s unreliable, having made and withdrawn similar offers in the past.”

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