I was so surprised by this poll that I had to look into the pollster who put it out just to be certain that it wasn’t some fly-by-night propaganda outlet.
It isn’t. Several sites rate Cygnal Polling as having a slight liberal bias in their results, but as a high-factuality pollster that focuses mostly on private clients. And the results are so lopsided that they would have had to stack the deck by a huge margin to get the results that they did.
And the results are BRUTAL for Democrats, although they also tell us something about the Democrat strategy for the midterms. They are focused entirely on turning out their base and have decided to go all-in on the strategy of mobilizing their base and exhausting the rest of the population.
When Democrats don’t believe illegal immigration is a problem, why would they have any desire to fix it? https://t.co/6W8MTY6JJy pic.twitter.com/9lefNVPebG
— Brent Buchanan, Pollster (@brentbuc) February 2, 2026
How brutal is the polling? Well, compared to the Ayatollah in Iran, they may be able to claim more popularity with the general public, and it’s likely that people would rather have their city be declared a sanctuary than get a case of Lyme Disease. Colonoscopies and root canals may be considered less pleasant than being lectured to about morality by Chuck Schumer, but few other things are.
According to Cygnal’s Brent Buchanon, Democrats are “catastrophically wrong” on the immigration issue, although I am not so certain. Not that he is misanalyzing the numbers, but perhaps on whether the Democrats are mistaken on their strategy.
68% of Democrats want to defund ICE. 58% of all voters oppose that. If you’re looking for the single biggest electoral blindspot in American politics right now, you just found it.
Cygnal just conducted a nationwide survey of midterm voters to see where things really stood on the issue of deportation, ICE, and immigration.
And I’ve never seen a major party this far out of step with the electorate on a single issue.
The conventional wisdom in Washington says immigration is a “complicated” issue where “reasonable people disagree.” The media frames it as a debate between compassion and cruelty. Democratic strategists apparently believe their base’s position is where the country is heading.
The data says they’re wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
I am a bit surprised by the numbers, but hardly shocked. I knew that “defund ICE” would be unpopular with the general public, but I expected that enough people would be tired of the chaos that many would be driven by exhaustion or fear of social opprobrium, making the number worse.
Let’s start with deportation. 61% of midterm voters support it. 67% of Democrats oppose it. That’s a massive chasm between most people and where the Democrats are.
64% of voters believe illegal immigration is a problem. 61% of Democrats say it isn’t. Same pattern.
Even the definition of “illegal” splits along party lines in ways that should alarm anyone running a Democratic campaign. 73% of midterm voters say coming to the U.S. without permission means you broke the law. 45% of Democrats disagree with that basic premise.
I suspect that a lot of this has to do with the Pravda Media audience now skews so Democrat that the ordinary person consumes or trusts so little of the propaganda that it is becoming ineffective. There are people who eagerly consume newspaper Op/Eds, watch CNN, believe The New York Times, and then everybody else.
We only see “everybody else” on X, if that. Most people aren’t even on X; they just want the activists to enjoy the tear gas.
54% of voters support ICE’s enforcement efforts. Among swing voters? 59%. These are the people who decide elections, and they’re overwhelmingly siding with enforcement…and the Republican position.
Yet 81% of Democrats oppose ICE enforcing federal immigration laws to remove illegal immigrants from the U.S. The gap between the Democratic base and swing voters on this issue is net 43 points. In a polarized era where most issues split along predictable lines, that kind of spread is extraordinary.
Where I diverge from Buchanan is in his conclusion from examining these numbers. He believes that they are electorally devastating, while I am not so sure.
The results of Democrats’ position on the deportation issue are electorally devastating.
Democrats currently hold a nominal lead on the generic congressional ballot. Standard stuff for the out-party. But when we frame the question around supporting ICE’s ability to enforce federal immigration laws, and a Democrat opposes that, the ballot instantly ties (4-point shift).
Push it one step further. If Democrats force a government shutdown over ICE funding, which is exactly what started today, Republicans take a 2-point lead.
That’s a 6-point swing on a single issue. In competitive districts, that’s the difference between winning and losing.
I hope he is right, but there is an alternate theory of the case, and one that I think Democrats are banking on: that the chaos, which I predict will escalate dramatically as the weather warms up, will increase voter participation among Democrats and depress it among Republicans and moderates.
This poll was taken on stolen land. https://t.co/yLFZABh6my
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 2, 2026
Democrats looked at the off-year elections, which sucked for Republicans in 2025, and think: if we can mobilize our base through propaganda and get them to believe they are on a crusade, we can swamp the polls through turnout. Democrats can get Jay Jones elected, which is a miracle, so “approval” in the general public is not the metric that matters.
NEW POLL:
🗳️ 73% say coming here illegally is breaking the law.
🗳️ 61% support deporting illegals.
🗳️ 58% oppose defunding ICE.
🗳️ 54% support ICE enforcing our immigration laws. pic.twitter.com/E7r1JTUHmw
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 2, 2026
Your average Democrat believes that the dark night of fascism is upon us. AWFLs are taking to TikTok proudly demonstrating that they are willing to sacrifice their own children to fight Bad Orange Man, so they surely will show up to the polls and drag every homeless person along with them.
Will Republicans and especially moderates do the same? Perhaps, but more likely not. It is the asymmetry of passion they are trying to create, not overall public approval.
It’s not a bad strategy, especially for a midterm election, because they typically have much lower turnout than presidential years.
Of course, some of this is due to sheer necessity. Trump is systematically tearing down their criminal syndicate, which has helped fund the endless NGOs, smurfing, and illegal voting. They simply must win, and they cannot depress their base, which is highly radicalized, by being even remotely reasonable.
Do I predict this strategy will work?
I am out of the prediction game. The available data is just not good or reliable enough to predict who will show up at the polls, how much early-voting cheating will occur, or any of the other variables that play into election outcomes. Elections are won on margins, not on what “most people” think.
What I do know is that the Democratic base is hysterical, and Democrats want it that way.
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