How immigration is heating up the 2024 race

Jun 25, 2024

With help from Ella Creamer, Jesse Naranjo, Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz

Photo illustration of torn-paper edge on image of Joe Biden shaking hands with law enforcement.

President Joe Biden talks with the U.S. Border Patrol and local officials, as he looks over the southern border, Feb. 29, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas. | POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP

What up, Recast family! We’re just two days from the first (and maybe only) presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in Atlanta. Plus, there are some must-watch House races in New York to keep your eye on tonight. First we take a look at how shifts in attitudes on immigration and race are shaping the leanings of the Democratic and Republican parties ahead of Election Day.

American attitudes on immigration have veered since Joe Biden won the White House four years ago, with several indicators pointing to a tougher, more conservative tilt — even among Democrats — according to a new report out Tuesday.

Researchers also found that American attitudes toward racial inequality and discrimination have shifted since Biden has been in the White House, with modest declines in liberal views toward the issue among Democrats and even some subtle increases of more liberal attitudes among Republicans.

Taken together, immigration has surpassed racial equality as a top-tier issue, marking a reverse of those policies from four years ago.

In 2020, for example, 47 percent of Americans viewed immigration as “very important”; that rate increased to 54 percent in 2024.

The findings are part of a report, dubbed “Pushed and Pulled: How Attitudes About Race and Immigration are Settling and Shifting After Trump,” by the nonpartisan Democracy Fund. The report compiles several public polling surveys, but the bulk of research came from the Democracy Fund VOTER Survey (an acronym for Views of the Electorate Research Survey), which has sampled Americans on such issues since 2011.

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John Sides, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and one of the researchers on the report, attributes several factors to the change: Declining media attention to racial justice issues since the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and the political rhetoric around race is less heated, making it less of an issue animating the electorate.

“Biden is a more careful public communicator about issues related to race,” Sides tells The Recast. “So because his rhetoric is by and large less inflammatory, less polarizing, he's not perceived as playing racial favorites, to the same extent that Trump was.”

The research, however, also points to other factors that may be filling that void.

Donald Trump smiles next to an autographed sign on border wall.

President Donald Trump smiles after autographing a section of the border wall during a tour, June 23, 2020, in San Luis, Arizona. | Evan Vucci/AP

Democrats had championed a more nuanced and sympathetic approach to immigration after many in the party viewed the America First agenda under former President Donald Trump as draconian. The Trump-era policies set into motion the practice of family separation, where scores of migrant children were split apart from their parents upon arriving in the U.S., and the so-called Muslim ban, which restricted immigration from certain majority-Muslim nations.

More recently though, Democrats and Republicans have both leaned into comparable messages about the need for stricter border enforcement.

There’s also been a significant uptick in media coverage on immigration, particularly by conservative outlets highlighting spikes in border crossings since Biden took office. Researchers say that media attention is causing greater public salience on the issue, which in turn is forcing politicians to ramp up their rhetoric and campaign messaging, which may explain why Republicans and Democrats alike are shifting in a more conservative direction.

There are “changes in the information environment that's occurring for people,” notes Robert Griffin, an associate director of research for Democracy Fund.

While Republicans have been among the toughest critics on the current administration's handling of the border issue, many big city Democrats, including New York Mayor Eric Adams and Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, have also publicly railed against the federal government’s lack of enforcement along the border.

President Joe Biden speaks at the White House about executive actions to limit the number of migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Biden speaks about an immigration executive order June 4 at the White House. | Alex Brandon/AP

Even on Capitol Hill, House Democrats formed “Democrats for Border Security,”a working group that was founded by Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), whose district runs along the U.S.-Mexico border, and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.). Suozzi ran in a special election earlier this year and flipped the House district previously held by GOP Rep. George Santos by focusing on his support for tighter border security.

The researchers don’t make predictions on whether immigration or racial inequity and discrimination will be the premier issues throughout the remainder of the 2024 election. But they suggest these trends are part of a “thermostatic model” of policy attitudes. Meaning that the public’s attitude tends to shift in the opposite direction of the current president’s policies — whoever that may be.

That’s not something Democrats want to hear less than five months out from Election Day.

We’ll certainly keep tabs on how all this shakes out — and to what extent it is an issue that Biden and Trump spar about in the presidential debate on Thursday.

All the best,
The Recast Team

A SQUAD MEMBER ON THE ROPES

Jamaal Bowman speaks during a rally.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman rallies supporters at an event Saturday in the Bronx. | David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

The good news for Democrats is the bitter primary for New York’s 16th Congressional District will end tonight. The bad news is the contest that has shattered spending records has exposed long simmering divides between the progressive and establishment wings over race, the influence of dark money in politics and the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a firebrand member of the progressive Squad seeking his third term, will learn if he’s done enough to survive an insurgent challenge from George Latimer, the current Westchester County executive who has spent some 35 years in local government.

Latimer, who has received roughly $15 million in supportive advertising from the AIPAC-affiliated group United Democracy Project, has also been endorsed by fellow New Yorkers former Rep. Mondaire Jones, who is seeking a comeback in a nearby district, and even 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Current Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) blasted Bowman on social media for his profanity-laced remarks at a rally Saturday, referring to it as “unhinged”and “unbecoming of a Member of Congress.”

Bowman has the backing of some of the biggest progressives in the party, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who stumped with Bowman over the weekend.

As the contest has gone on, Bowman has raised allegations of racism, suggesting that Latimer’s campaign has distributed mailers that have darkened his skin in photos. He also claimed that AIPAC is attempting to buy the race and that supporting Latimer’s candidacy was in essence a bid to silence an outspoken Black man.

Latimer is pushing back on those allegations, but during a debate this month he accused Bowman of focusing solely on Black and brown constituents in the district at the expense of everyone else that lives there.

“You talk about the needs of part of the district, and you completely ignore them,” Latimer said during a fiery televised debate this month. “You don’t mention Asians. You don’t mention people who are not Black or brown. There’s a whole district, Jamaal, that you’ve ignored, and the district knows you’ve ignored it.”

Latimer entered the contest at the urging of Jewish leaders upset with Bowman’s rhetoric toward Israel following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

Bowman has referred to Israel’s military response to those attacks as genocide and opposed a symbolic House measure to support Israel following the initial attacks.

The winner of the primary contest will be considered the prohibitive favorite to win this deep-blue district in the fall.

ICYMI @ POLITICO

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