The Same, Only More So: NBC News Polls Post-Surge Minnesota

Did Operation Metro Surge radicalize the electorate? Democrats certainly think so, even if polling on immigration has barely budged during and after the enforcement effort in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Rather than radicalize the Minnesota electorate, however, it may have just entrenched it more deeply. 

A new NBC News poll report gives us a look at this dynamic, both within the Metro area of Minnesota and throughout the state. Rather than change minds, the entire weeks-long experience of robust immigration enforcement merely hardened positions:

After federal officers killed two U.S. citizens last month, self-identified Republicans in the state expressed stronger support for Trump’s immigration agenda than Republicans nationwide, while Minnesota Democrats and independents pulled more strongly the other way than their national counterparts.

That’s according to two NBC News Decision Desk polls powered by SurveyMonkey fielded nationwide and specifically in Minnesota in late January and early February. The polls were conducted after federal immigration officers shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti and before the Trump administration began to pull immigration officers out of Minneapolis.

That timing seems curious. Why not wait until after the end of Operation Metro Surge before polling the populace? Would that matter? The concessions by Minnesota officials made to bring the surge to an end may have changed some minds about the nature of the conflict, or perhaps just pushed fence-sitters back into their previous positions. Polling did overlap a little with Homan’s declaration that the drawdown of immigration enforcement officers would soon commence, which should have alerted NBC and Survey Monkey that their responses may become much less relevant in the following few days. 

At any rate, the results showed that the experience just tended to confirm previous positions, only with more enthusiasm, on both sides of the issue:

The numbers suggest that the experience was a galvanizing — and polarizing — event. Across a range of questions, Minnesotans frequently had stronger feelings both for or against administration policies compared with all U.S. adults. Adults from Minnesota were less likely to respond that they “somewhat” approved or disapproved, for example, of Trump’s job on immigration and border security. … 

More than three-quarters of Minnesota independents said ICE should be changed in some way. About a quarter said it should be abolished, while half called for reform. Democrats were almost evenly split, with slightly more calling for reform instead of abolition and almost none saying ICE should continue operating in its current form.

About three-quarters of Minnesota independents and all but 2% of Democrats said ICE had gone too far. The effect was more pronounced in the Twin Cities metro area, where the shootings happened and protests opposing the aggressive actions flared.

NBC makes much of a shift among independents against Trump’s immigration policies, but that relies heavily on independents in the Twin Cities. Most of those are either DFL voters in practice, or positioned farther to the Left and more inclined to Democratic Socialists or Greens, especially in Minneapolis. Independents outside of Hennepin and Ramsey counties tend to look more like independents in the rest of the country, and the shift there looks much different:

Independents in the state were still more supportive of Trump than those nationwide. Four in 10 said they strongly or somewhat approved of Trump’s job, and roughly the same number approved of his handling of immigration and border security. That’s about 10 points higher than for independents nationwide.

In other words, indies in the more representative districts of Minnesota tended to look more favorably on Trump, even more so than independents elsewhere. 

Why might that be? It’s because deporting illegal aliens continues to be a popular policy, especially regarding criminal illegal aliens. The latest iteration of the Harvard-Harris CAPS poll resulted from a national survey taken after the shootings of both Alex Pretti and Renee Good (January 28-29, over 2000 respondents). The results on both immigration enforcement and Trump’s handling of the unrest in Minneapolis remained positive even before the conclusion of Operation Metro Surge and Minnesota’s concessions on cooperating with ICE and the Border Patrol:

• Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes: 73/27 in favor
• Deporting all immigrants who are here illegally: 52/48
• Trump border enforcement: 52/48
• ICE enforcement in cities: 44/55
• Should local jails cooperate with ICE?: 67/33
• Should city and state officials cooperate with ICE?: 67/33
• Support of oppose elected officials encouraging resistance to ICE: 43/57, 62% of indies oppose

On deportations, the picture with independents is more mixed. However, they strongly support deportations of illegal aliens who commit “serious crimes” (79%), legal permanent residents who commit serious crimes (62%), and immigrants who overstay their visas (57%). Forty-six percent of independents support the deportation of “recently” arrived illegal aliens without other criminal activity – not a majority endorsement, but still nearly half of all independents (49/51 overall). All of these results came amid the violent “resistance” activities and the height of the controversies surrounding Operation Metro Surge, too. And they are consistent with results over the past year from the Harvard-Harris CAPS poll. 

That operation didn’t change minds in Minnesota. It didn’t change minds in the rest of the country, either. Trump got elected on a mandate to secure the borders and enforce immigration law robustly, a result of four years of border chaos and an invasion of millions of illegal aliens during the Biden Regency. That mandate remains firmly in place, and Democrat attempts to shut it down risks another round of electoral consequences – if not in 2026, then in 2028. 

Editor’s Note: Democrat politicians and their radical supporters will do everything they can to interfere with and threaten ICE agents enforcing our immigration laws.

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