New Polling Data Shows Immigration Enforcement Is Costing Republicans Their Own Voters
A new national survey finds 70% of Americans think the Trump administration is too focused on deportations. Immigration enforcement ranks as a top driver of defection among Trump's own 2024 voters.
I came across a fascinating new national survey today from Morris Predictive Insights that I wanted to share. I have been paying closer attention to polling data lately, especially anything that tracks the relationship between immigration enforcement and how voters perceive the parties heading into 2026. This one stood out. It is a poll of 1,500 U.S. adults conducted February 6-10, and it offers some of the clearest evidence yet that the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda is not the political winner that its architects assume it to be.
Nearly seven in ten Americans believe the administration is focusing too much on deportations and not enough on the economy, inflation, and the cost of living. That number alone is striking. But the more revealing findings are in the crosstabs.
The survey focuses on what the pollster calls “Trump defectors,” defined as 2024 Trump voters who now say they would vote for a Democrat in Congress or are undecided. That group represents roughly 14% of Trump’s 2024 coalition, and their reasons for leaving are telling. When asked to identify the biggest factors driving their changed opinion, the economy and cost of living came in first at 49%, followed by Trump’s personal conduct at 34%. But ICE deployments to cities ranked third at 32%, and immigration enforcement and deportation policies came in fourth at 27%. Combined, immigration enforcement issues are a major factor pushing voters out of the Republican coalition.
The demographic profile of these defectors is also worth noting. Compared to loyal Trump voters, they are younger (median age 40 versus 54), more racially diverse (54% White non-Hispanic versus 76%), and more urban (64% urban or suburban versus 51%). This is exactly the slice of the electorate that Republicans need to hold in competitive House and Senate races in 2026, and enforcement policy appears to be actively pushing them away.
The survey also surfaces an intra-coalition fracture among Trump’s own voters that deserves more attention. Among Latino Trump voters, 46% agree the administration is too focused on deportations, compared to 35% of White Trump voters. Only 40% of Latino Trump voters strongly approve of the administration’s handling of deportations, versus 57% of White Trump voters. These differences suggest that the escalation in immigration enforcement is straining the multiracial coalition that Trump built in 2024, particularly among Latino voters who were central to his gains.
On the broader policy landscape, the poll confirms what other surveys have shown. An NBC News poll found Trump’s immigration ratings tumbling as Americans lose confidence in his approach, and a Reuters/Ipsos survey reported his immigration approval hitting a new low. The Morris data adds granularity to that picture. Seventy-two percent of Americans support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the country, and 71% support a path to legal residency. Border security is the only issue area where the administration’s approval is net positive (50% approve versus 46% disapprove). On every other issue tested, including deportations, jobs, inflation, tariffs, health care, and foreign policy, disapproval exceeds approval.
The party image numbers tell a similar story. Fifty-one percent of Americans say they view the Republican Party less favorably than a year ago. And a third of Americans say they would view the Democratic Party more favorably if Democratic leaders pressed the administration to reduce federal agent deployments to cities.
These findings resonate with what I see in the enforcement data I track on this newsletter. The detention population has reached historic highs, the composition of who ICE is arresting has shifted dramatically toward people with no criminal history, and ICE detainer data shows the growth in enforcement activity has been driven entirely by people without criminal convictions. The polling data from Morris provides the demand side of this equation: the public is watching what is happening and they do not like it. And a lot of what they don’t like, it seems, is that the administration is not focusing on national security threats and public safety risks, but on people who are living peacefully in our neighborhoods, working in our economy, and attending our places of worship.
The path to citizenship numbers are especially relevant to those of us who work with mixed-status families, where a U.S. citizen is married to an undocumented spouse and there is no clear path to legalization even when the family does everything right. Many people are now looking to bipartisan legislation like the American Families United Act and the Dignity Act to try to fix some of these problems. The fact that over 70% of the public supports a path to citizenship, including majorities of Trump’s own voters, should give lawmakers in both parties reason to take action.
If there is a throughline in my work, it is that the data on immigration enforcement tells a different story than the political rhetoric. This poll is another piece of evidence for that proposition. The enforcement system is expanding rapidly, public support for that expansion is eroding, and the political costs are falling disproportionately on the party that owns the policy. Whether anyone in a position of power responds to that reality remains to be seen.
A note on the pollster: G. Elliott Morris is well known in the polling and elections space. He previously led election forecasting at The Economist and has built a reputation for methodological rigor. His firm, Morris Predictive Insights, fielded this survey through Verasight, a mixed-mode provider that recruits respondents through random address-based sampling and verifies identity through multi-step authentication. The sample was weighted to the December 2025 Current Population Survey and Pew partisanship benchmarks. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 points. (Full topline results here.)
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Doesn’t matter which war torture austerity party they support after all it was Obama the more effective evil that fully expanded ice.
Can’t even take any relief in them defecting from red maga to blue maga it was also Obama that got those PNAC wars that w bush couldn’t and made them cool as well.
One development that hasn’t gotten much attention: on Feb. 18, 2026, the district court in Maldonado Bautista v. Santacruz (C.D. Cal. No. 5:25-cv-01873) granted a motion to enforce (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.980210/gov.uscourts.cacd.980210.116.0.pdf) its prior judgment of December 18, 2025, vacated Matter of Yajure Hurtado under the APA, and ordered nationwide class notice that eligible detainees may seek bond under §1226(a).
That enforcement order came after the government continued denying bond despite the court’s December ruling. It’s a significant separation-of-powers moment that’s somewhat under the radar compared to the Fifth Circuit’s decision.
Also worth watching:
• Eighth Circuit – Joaquin Avila v. Pamela Bondi, No. 25-03248 (argued 2/19/26; opinion likely soon).
• Sixth Circuit – Jesus Pizarro Reyes v. Kevin Raycraft, No. 25-01982 (argument in March).
The Fifth Circuit’s consolidated opinion upholding the government's mandatory detention interpretation of statute as adjudicated in the courts (No. 25-20496: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/25/25-20496-CV0.pdf) isn’t necessarily the final word. There’s active litigation across circuits, and the landscape is still moving.