A new poll found that nearly 90% of United States likely general election voters blame the federal government for the ongoing border crisis.
The poll from the Trafalgar Group for Convention of States Action found a bipartisan consensus on putting responsibility for the border on the federal government, though Republicans had a somewhat higher percentage. Roughly 91.4% of Republicans said it was the responsibility of the federal government to manage the current influx of migrants, compared to 82.9% of Democrats and 84.5% of Independents. Altogether, 86.8% of respondents believed it was the responsibility of the federal government over the states.
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Respondents were asked, in light of authorities at the border being overwhelmed, "Do you believe it is the responsibility of states or the Federal government to handle these increased costs at the southern border?"
"I've never seen a poll like this — 87% of the American public blames the federal government for the problem at the border," President of Convention of States Action Mark Meckler said on the John Solomon Reports podcast. "What was most interesting is you dig into ... the crosstabs — all the Democrats, breakdowns by age, by party, by race — what you saw was no difference literally within a few points across the board.
"So it's almost 90% of people blame the federal government," he said. "And they expect that the states are going to have to fix it. They don't believe that the federal government's going to fix the problem."
Other questions to respondents reflected a pessimistic attitude regarding border issues.
Over half of the respondents, 53.4%, reported having no confidence at all that the "Federal government is focused on addressing the crisis at the southern border and has a plan to address the widespread drug and human trafficking occurring at the U.S./Mexico border?" Another 14.6% reported being not very confident, while a little under one-third reported being very or somewhat confident.
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About three-quarters of the respondents said that "individual states have the right to take action to protect their citizens and state borders" if the federal government failed to do so. These responses were somewhat skewed between Republicans and Democrats; nearly all, 94.6%, of Republicans responded in the affirmative, while Democrats were split down the middle.
The poll, conducted from April 11-14, interviewed 1096 U.S. likely general election voters and had a margin of error of +/- 2.9%.