Voters worry more about President Joe Biden’s inflationary and open border policies than former President Donald Trump’s abortion policy, Cook Report/BSG/GS Strategy Group polling confirmed Thursday.
The polling appears to confirm that Trump’s immigration and economic messages sabotage and undermine the attraction of Biden’s most popular 2024 issue, health care, and thus essentially diminish Biden’s political appeal.
Abortion is a state issue, Trump’s policy essentially dictates, while Biden believes it is a federal issue. Biden holds higher approval marks on the question of abortion, but his approval of abortion does not outweigh Trump’s popular economic and immigration policies, the poll found.
Among all voters, 73% ranked Inflation/Cost of Living as one of their top three issues, while 52% named Immigration/Border Security and 35% named Abortion/Reproductive Rights. Even among women, abortion ranked third (73% inflation, 48% immigration and 42% abortion) and among independents, abortion/reproductive rights ranked fourth.
When we asked voters which worried them more, Biden setting economic policy or Trump setting policy for abortion rights, 55% said they were more worried about Biden handling the economy than they were about Trump setting policy on abortion (45%). In fact, aside from Democrats, the only other demographic group that was more concerned about Trump setting abortion policy than Biden setting economic policy were college-educated women.
On immigration, a top issue for voters in these swing states, 53% of voters said they were more concerned about Biden setting immigration policy in a second term, while 47% were more concerned about Trump setting abortion policy.
The poll surveyed 3,969 voters in seven battleground states from May 6 to May 13, 2024.
The Cook Political Report findings were first explained by a highly respected liberal political scientist, Ruy Teixeira, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He wrote an in-depth analysis that examined political “cross-pressures” between immigration and health care issues among the 2024 electorate.
The nexus of “cross-pressures” identifies a group of voters who support both America First immigration policies (detainment deportation, asylum restrictions, and a border wall) and Biden’s most popular overall policy of Medicare price negotiation.
In eight sets of data encompassing the nexus of “cross-pressures,” Teixeira argued Trump’s immigration policy sabotages and undermines the attraction of Biden’s most popular issue and thus essentially diminishes Biden’s political appeal in 2024.
Teixeira underpinned his analysis with Biden’s historically low polling and Trump’s dominance in swing states, both reported by Breitbart News.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.