Dreams Dashed But Hope Remains
1. GOP Keeps Gaslighting Dreamers and the Rest of America Despite the Data
Once again, Republicans killed another bipartisan effort to protect Dreamers from deportation and address border security. This was a lopsided deal, too, that would have tremendously increased investments in border security – estimated at $40 billion. Clearly, the GOP doesn’t want solutions; they want to score political points and keep gaslighting America with fears about “migrant invasions” and illegal drugs, insisting to voters that they can’t deliver a path to citizenship to Dreamers without securing the border. And while they create this harmful narrative that blames Democrats and immigrants, they entertain bipartisanship only to dash the hopes of millions with their con. Senators McConnell, John Cornyn (R-TX) and the rest of the extreme Republican caucus don’t want to step up and govern – they want to cater to the extreme in pursuit of power.
What is the GOP thinking? We’ve crunched the numbers: Almost every poll for the past decade has shown that a path to citizenship for Dreamers and undocumented immigrants is highly popular and in demand.
THE PROOF – A NEW POST-ELECTION POLL: Global Strategy Group (GSG) found 69% of battleground voters support a compromise that both provides a path to citizenship for Dreamers and invests in border security.
Even Senator John Cornyn’s go-to pollster found in a new survey of Texas voters overwhelming support for a bipartisan deal that protects Dreamers and addresses our asylum system and border.
The GOP calculus is all wrong. Nick Gourevitch, Partner and Managing Director at GSG, surmised, “Our post-election poll showed that Republican extremism was a major factor in their losses in the midterms and that in key states, anti-immigrant attacks failed to persuade the key swing voters who delivered the election for Democrats.”
2. GOP extremism cost them the elections, remains dangerous
Republicans likely invested hundreds of millions of dollars and coordinated a two-year campaign to elevate a distorted narrative about the border, with America’s Voice ad tracking project identifying over 3,200 paid communications with anti-immigrant attacks. The massive investment in nativism and Stephen Miller should shoulder a significant amount of the blame for their historically bad showing. Miller’s nativist political strategy was given a platform, major candidates across the country adopted it, and about $100 million+ later, it was a political loser.
An America’s Voice analysis found over 20 key battleground races where MAGA extremism contributed to a GOP loss.
The GOP’s radicalization of immigration echoed the language of domestic terrorists. America’s Voice found over 700 examples of Republican electeds and candidates amplifying the white nationalist “invasion” and “replacement” conspiracies.
What the future holds: Though their extremism cost Republicans key battleground races, the new GOP majority in the House is already promising to double-down on their attacks on President Biden’s border policy, which means there will be hearings and more anti-immigrant comms in the airwaves and on social media. This is dangerous.
Solid majorities across all racial groups are rightfully concerned about the GOP’s extremism leading to violence. The dangerous rhetoric from GOP campaigns cross many issues, like the transphobic attacks that are also courting deadly political violence.
3. Crime and safety in the midterms – and its connection to immigration
Crime and safety are key elements of the GOP anti-immigration message and in early 2022, the Vera Institute and Vera Action launched an effort to use comprehensive, robust public opinion research and message testing with thousands of voters in key battleground states to drive an effective narrative about safety, justice, and reform in the wake of backlash and fear-mongering about crime.
After conducting four rounds of research to understand what matters most about crime, safety, and justice to different audiences, here are the major takeaways:
Voters saw through the attacks and dog whistles at the polls this November, signaling they want solutions, not scare tactics when it comes to safety.
Scare tactics were effective in places where backlash over crime and safety preceded the midterms.
Candidates, such as Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, facing relentless attacks nevertheless beat the odds by refusing to pivot or pander. They addressed concerns head-on by presenting an affirmative vision for preventing crime and delivering safety.
Crime and safety remains a significant concern for some voters—especially Black voters—but those concerns do not equal support for punitive criminal justice policies or more of the status quo.
A winning strategy is neither “progressive” nor “conservative” on crime—it acknowledges people should be safe and offers a strong, affirmative vision with solutions for preventing crime and delivering safety.
Bottom line: What works is to message early and often about preventing crime, delivering safety, and securing justice by embracing the concrete solutions that we know work and that the public supports. Read Vera Action’s full findings here.
4. Proof: Pro-Immigration messaging increases margin of victory
Earlier this quarter, BlueLabs Analytics measured the impact of a 2022 digital persuasion campaign conducted by the Immigration Hub in Pennsylvania that employed pro-immigration messaging and held accountable GOP candidates on their anti-immigrant positions.
Results underscore what the Hub has long preached: Saturation of pro-immigration messaging increases and/or maintains pro-immigrant sentiments and inoculates against GOP attacks on the issue. By delivering content that exposes a Republican candidate's anti-immigrant position or record, you shift vote choice in favor of Democrats and increase their margin of victory.
The breakdown shows how critical it is to message on immigration as part of a Democratic offense:
Pennsylvanian women and young voters who were exposed to this campaign saw positive lifts in sentiment and sympathy, respectively, towards immigrants, Democratic candidate support, and Biden approval on his handling of immigration.
69% of PA voters are more likely to agree that immigrants are good for their communities, a 7 point net positive increase from the control group.
57% of PA voters are more likely to strongly agree that the GOP’s stance on immigration is too extreme for most Americans, a 9 point net positive increase from the control group.
PA voters were less likely to support the Republican candidates for governor and senator
For the Senate race, 62% of voters were more likely to vote for Josh Shapiro as opposed to 29% for Doug Mastriano.
For the Governor race, 57% of voters were more likely to vote for John Fetterman as opposed to 33% for Dr. Oz.
5. Year-end right-wing media report out
Right-wing media generated over 61,000 mentions across print, podcast, and television outlets to an estimated audience of over 59 million people in 2022.The three most significant surges in negative immigration mentions this year occurred in January (7,337), April (6,141), and September (7,925).
In early January, right-wing media latched onto the phrase “border crisis” after Fox News published court documents that revealed the number of border encounters in December before their official release.
In early April, the CDC announced it would repeal Title 42, causing outrage in right-wing media.
In mid-September, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recklessly flew 50 migrants to Martha's Vineyard unannounced resulting in the most prominent peak in mentions of the year.
There’s more - read the Hub’s year-end report on right media and its impact on America’s media consumption.
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