A clear majority of US voters say that border security is the most important thing for Congress to work on with a little more than six months to go before next year’s election.
Nearly six in 10 voters (57%) say that “border reform legislation” is “more important” than “all other things Congress could be working on,” according to a poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Americans for Prosperity released Monday.
A plurality of voters (42%) said they were most in favor of a hypothetical policy to “secure our border and ports,” while another 36% said they most wanted to establish “clear and predictable rules and laws for our immigration system.
Nearly three-quarters of voters (73%), said they were most likely to trust Border Patrol agents and officials “a great deal” or a “fair amount” on the issue of immigration, with 69% saying the same of both local law enforcement officials and border region residents.
Neither President Biden nor former President Donald Trump broke 50% on the question, with 45% saying they would trust Trump a “great deal” or “fair amount,” and only 43% saying the same of Biden.
In total, more than a quarter of voters (27%) said illegal immigration and border security was a top-two issue to them, trailing only inflation (39%) and ahead of the economy and jobs (25%).
Despite more than eight in 10 voters (81%) saying they had a “negative” view of the state of US border security, the pull showed Biden leading Trump by two percentage points, 45%-43%, with 12% undecided.
Trump tops Biden by one percentage point in the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of polling.
In another rough sign for the president, 74% of respondents felt that the country was on the wrong track, compared to 26% who believed it was moving in the right direction.
Just 41% of voters approved of Biden’s job performance, while 59% disapproved. Among independents, only 33% approved of the president’s work compared to 67% who disapproved, per the poll.
Notably, the generic congressional ballot was dead even between the two parties at 42% apiece, with 16% undecided.
Like Biden, Trump also makes a bad impression among voters, with 38% holding a favorable view and 59% holding an unfavorable view.
Voters think little better of members of Congress, with Republicans 24 percentage points underwater on favorability (35% favorable to 59% unfavorable) and Democrats 15 points below par (40% favorable to 55% unfavorable).
Public Opinion Strategies conducted the survey April 8-11 and sampled 1,000 registered voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.53 percentage points.
