Trump is losing normies on immigration

Nate Silver

Yesterday, a U.S. border patrol agent shot and killed a 37-year-old Minnesota man, Alex Pretti, for the crime of … actually, it’s not clear why he was killed. Pretti was an ICU nurse who was filming a confrontation between an immigration agent and two civilians. He had a gun on him, but he was licensed to carry it. It doesn’t appear that he was holding his weapon at any point, and it was removed from his person moments before he was shot — shot at least 10 times despite already having been pinned down on the ground.

And, of course, this is the second such incident captured on video in Minneapolis within 17 days. Another citizen, Renee Good, was shot and killed in her vehicle by an ICE agent on Jan. 7.

I wrote about public opinion on ICE on immigration in a New York Times chat following that incident, noting that initial polling showed that few voters thought Good’s killing was justified and that public opinion was turning against ICE. Indeed, in our tracking, Trump’s net approval rating on immigration has declined by about 4 points since the day before Good’s death until today. Meanwhile, his overall approval rating has declined by 2 points and is near its second-term lows.

Note also that there’s no longer much of a gap between Trump’s immigration numbers and his overall approval rating. On average, over the course of his term, Trump’s net approval on immigration has been about 6 points better than his overall rating; it had been his least-bad issue. Now, that gap has mostly evaporated.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-is-losing-normies-on-immigration