Former President Donald Trump’s plan to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” is winning critical support from swing voters and the nation’s white working class — both of which are paramount to a victory for him in this year’s presidential election.
A CBS News/YouGov poll this week revealed widespread support for deporting “all” of the 11 million to 22 million illegal aliens currently residing in the United States. A majority of 62 percent of registered voters said they support such a deportation effort.
WATCH — Lindsey Graham: “On Day One, President Trump Will Deport People Here Illegally by the Tens of Thousands”:
Significantly, though, is support for mass deportations among two electoral groups most vital to Trump’s reelection bid: Swing voters and white working-class voters.
Both electoral groups helped catapult Trump to the presidency in 2016 against Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping him win all but two of the Rust Belt states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. To recreate 2016, Trump will need both groups in such states to push him over the line yet again.
With his mass deportation plan, Trump is winning over about 6-in-10 swing voters and potentially some disenfranchised Democrats, almost 4-in-10 who back the plan.
Putting political ideological groups aside, the white working class — often the most likely to compete against illegal aliens for scarce blue-collar jobs — is the most supportive of Trump’s deportation plan.
WATCH — Rubio: I Support Mass Deportation, We Have to Do Something Dramatic to Remove Illegal Immigrants:
While 74 percent of white Americans without a college degree back the deportation plan, just 26 percent oppose it. Even among white Americans with a college degree, almost 6-in-10 support the plan while 42 percent oppose it.
Following the 2016 presidential election, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver detailed how the white working class decided Trump’s victory, showing that the electoral power of these historically low-propensity voters had an intense swing in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
“In the 10 states with the largest share of white voters without college degrees, Trump beat his polling average by an average of 8 percentage points — a major polling miss,” Silver wrote. “… overall, the correlation between the share of white non-college voters in a state and the amount by which Trump overperformed his polls is quite high.”
The CBS/YouGov poll surveyed more than 1,600 registered voters from June 5-7 and has a margin of error of ± 3.8 percentage points.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
