The crisis at the border after Trump’s implementation of his “zero-tolerance” immigration policy was shaping up to be the perfect storm for Democrats heading into the midterm elections. In spite of the fact that the policy of separating children from their parents when those families were caught crossing the border illegally was put in place well before Trump took office in order to avoid detaining children for longer than 20 days, images of crying children nevertheless made for potent ammunition as Democrats try to drag down Trump and the GOP heading into the November elections.
Or at least so they thought.
After weeks of non-stop media coverage and feigned moral outrage by Democratic politicians over Trump’s border policy, a CBS poll from this week shows that Democrats have actually slipped down another point on the midterm ballot.
The question asked of those polled was which party they would like to see control Congress come November, and the poll was conducted right in the middle of the heated immigration debate. The results of the poll were that 36% of respondents said they would like to see the GOP control Congress come November whereas 40% of respondents said that they would like to see the Democratic Party control Congress come November.
This result shows the Democratic Party sliding one percentage point from where they were when the same poll was conducted two weeks prior.
Given that the margin of error on the CBS poll is 3%, and that CBS’ audience tends to overwhelmingly skew to the left, Democrats and the GOP are essentially in a statistical tie at this point.
It’s also important to note that the CBS poll is far from being an outlier, a Reuters tracking poll shows Democrats down four percentage points from where they were the second week of June and even polls that tend to favor Democrats don’t have them moving up any after the immigration debate.
Nevertheless, that’s not to say that the media’s coverage of the crisis on the border has not hurt the GOP’s image. In the notes on their most recent poll, CBS said, “One-third of Americans and registered voters say the separation policy will be a very important matter in their congressional vote this fall. Of those who say it will change, more say it will make them vote Democratic than Republican. That gap is even larger among those who have never voted in a midterm before.”
The majority of Americans still do not support the blanket amnesty policies put forth by the Democratic Party. However, the immigration debate will likely move people who are not typically engaged in midterm voting to cast ballots in the November election.
In spite of this, though, the increase in engagement has not yet translated to an increase in Democratic support in the way the party hoped that it would.
Much of this may have to do with a lack of trust in the media. Americans have grown weary of seeing the media used as little more than a propaganda arm for the Democratic Party that stands in constant opposition of President Trump. Mishaps such as trotting out photos of children that were actually separated under the Obama administration and putting the photo of a crying girl who wasn’t actually separated from her parents at all on the cover of TIME magazine hasn’t helped the media’s credibility on the immigration debate.
When you combine these mishaps with the ongoing and obvious bias within the mainstream media, many Americans have become numb to the media constantly telling them that Trump and the GOP are monsters.
Now that Trump has put an end to the policy of separating children from their families via executive order – fixing a problem that he himself did not create, the damage done by the issue seems to be over. And if polls taken during the heat of the debate are to be believed, the damage done was minimal at best.
Suffice it to say that if Democrats want to fire up their base and drive voters to the polls in November, they’re going to have to start putting forth real policies and solutions rather than just attacking Trump and the GOP. With the election now just months away, though, this seems to be something that the Democratic Party is either unable or unwilling to do.
~ American Liberty Report
