Josh Wingrove and Gregory Korte | Bloomberg News (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Six in 10 swing-state voters say President Joe Biden bears responsibility for a surge in migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, a downbeat signal for his reelection prospects as Republicans largely avoid blame on the issue, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll found.

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Biden again trails Donald Trump in each of seven swing states in the monthly survey, and lags Trump 42% to 48% across all those states in a head-to-head match-up. The former president’s lead grows to 9 percentage points when third-party candidates are included.

The economy remains voters’ chief concern at the ballot box by a wide margin. Yet a greater share of respondents cited immigration as their most important issue in the 2024 election than in any previous installment of the poll, while the proportion who said the same about the economy fell to the lowest yet.

The narrowing gap suggests that GOP efforts to put immigration at the center of the campaign are working, especially against a backdrop of a resilient job market and a drumbeat of border security coverage in conservative media.

Biden’s comparative weakness on the issue comes as Trump urges his party’s lawmakers to block a border bill before the election in order to deprive the president of a policy victory in this area.

The poll findings broadly are a warning sign to Biden, whose allies are urging his campaign to step up its efforts as Trump has all but clinched the GOP nomination. Respondents trust Trump more than the president on a wide range of issues, including the economy, immigration, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, ties with China, infrastructure, housing and crime.

Trust Gap

The poll’s overall margin of error is 1 percentage point, with wider margins of 3 to 5 points in each of the surveyed states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump’s lead in most of the states is within the margin of error. Trump won six of the seven in 2016 to pave his path to the White House; Biden won six of the seven in 2020.

The 61% of swing-state voters who view Biden as at least somewhat responsible for the increase in migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border is far higher than the 38% who said the same about Republicans in Congress or the 30% who said so about the Trump administration.

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump addresses a campaign rally at the Rochester Opera House on Jan. 21, 2024, in Rochester, New Hampshire. (Alex Wong/Getty Images/TNS)

Respondents were also more than twice as likely to say Democrats in Congress are “very responsible” for the situation as their Republican counterparts.

The trust gap between the two presidential candidates on the issue is growing. By a 22-point margin, swing-state voters say they trust Trump over Biden to handle immigration, up from 17 points in the December poll.

While Biden gets more of the political blame, swing-state voters also recognized that geopolitical considerations outside the U.S. are driving the border crisis. Large majorities — bigger shares than blame Biden — cited corruption, economic conditions, famine and war as factors behind the increase in migration.

The preference for immigration as a top issue was pronounced among Trump voters — and particularly Republican men. Among voters aged 65 and older, the economy and immigration are now tied for the top issue.

The poll was conducted Jan. 16 to Jan. 22, before Biden pledged to “shut down the border right now” if Congress passes a bipartisan bill giving him emergency authorities.

Senate negotiators are close to announcing a deal on migration policy and Ukraine aid, but the prospects for the proposal are dim in the House where the speaker and conservatives are set to oppose it. The border deal would make it harder to apply for asylum in the U.S. and ease the ability of the president to deport border-crossers when migration flows reach certain levels. Trump has urged Republicans to reject the overture, saying “a bad border deal is far worse than no border deal.”

Migrant encounters along the southwestern border hit a record high of 302,034 in the month of December, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Voters in the southwestern state of Arizona were most likely to say they’ve seen an increase in immigrants in their state. But the immigration issue also resonated in states far from the border. In every swing state except Michigan, a majority of voters said they’ve seen more immigrants over the last few years.

‘Pinning Blame’

Only 29% of respondents said the national economy is headed in the right direction, but larger shares said their own city or state’s situation is on track.

And while the percentage of swing-state voters who said the economy was a “very important” issue for them held steady from December, a smaller share named it as their top issue — 36%, down from 40%.

Meanwhile, 13% of respondents picked immigration as their most important issue, up from 10% last month.

“As the economy improves and that’s less important to voters, there’s going to be space for voters to be concerned about other issues,” said Caroline Bye, vice president of Morning Consult. “It’s clear from these results that immigration is an important issue. It’s an issue that’s going to be key to this election. And so far Republicans have been successful in pinning blame on President Biden.”

Some 51% said they trusted Trump more to manage the economy, compared to 33% who said they trusted Biden more. Bloomberg News and Morning Consult are conducting polls monthly in the run-up to the November presidential election.

Still, the poll offers some bright spots for Biden and Democrats. One is that the share of voters who named democracy as their top issue has increased. It’s now the foremost concern of 21% of Democratic voters, second only to the economy at 25% and far ahead of abortion at 11%. Biden has regularly painted Trump as a threat to democracy.

METHODOLOGY

The Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll surveyed 4,956 registered voters in seven swing states: 800 registered voters in Arizona, 798 in Georgia, 703 in Michigan, 457 in Nevada, 706 in North Carolina, 795 in Pennsylvania and 697 in Wisconsin. The surveys were conducted online from Jan. 16 to 22 and the aggregated data across the seven swing states were weighted to approximate a target sample of swing state registered voters based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, marital status, home ownership, 2020 presidential vote and state. State-level data were weighted to approximate a target sample of registered voters in the respective state based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, marital status, home ownership, and 2020 presidential vote. The margin of error is plus or minus 1 percentage point across the seven states; 3 percentage points in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania; 4 percentage points in Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and 5 percentage points in Nevada.

(Bloomberg writers Jennah Haque, Elena Mejia and Erik Wasson contributed to this story.)

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