GOP Migrant Busing, Flights Didn't have Lasting Voter Impact, but Dobbs Did

With a couple of weeks to go to the midterm elections, which issues voters care about is a key question.

Some issues are always top of voters' mind, such as jobs and the economy. Other issues can be influenced by specific events. Two such issues are abortion and immigration.

The rolling back of the Roe v. Wade decision earlier this year made abortion a headline issue and sparked wide protests. Equally, the flying of migrants to Martha's Vineyard, instigated by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, pushed immigration to the top of the news cycle. But did either change what voters care about?

Polls indicate that abortion concerns have shifted since the Dobbs decision, but worries about immigration were temporary.

A survey by The Economist and YouGov asked voters a range of questions week after week, providing a frequent gauge to voter concerns and how they might react to the news.

On abortion, voters consistently were in the 40 to 45 percent range for answering "very important" to the question "How important are the following issues to you?" That changed on the leak of the Supreme Court guidance on how the vote would go on Dobbs. After that moment in May, the voting range jumped to 45 to 50 percent. The numbers don't show how people will vote in the midterms—or if they support abortion rights or are anti-abortion—but the topic is more often on the minds of voters. After the Dobbs decision was announced in late June, voters' response to the same question jumped again, but only by about 4 percent. After the leak and the decision, the polls showed abortion remained an issue at the top of voters' minds.

Flying immigrants to Democratic areas seems to have given immigration a brief boost—it hit a year-high mark of 51 percent in the same "how important" question put to respondents. But it has dropped back to similar levels seen during the rest of 2022, rather than the spike having a lasting effect.

Syracuse University professor Elizabeth Cohen told Newsweek that voters often respond to major news events and how those events are framed in the media. However, she said the news around abortion and immigration were very different events.

"The Dobbs decision was surrounded by intrigue, following the leak of a draft decision well before the decision was issued as well as controversy about the disparity between what some in the majority had promised with respect to the precedent of Roe v. Wade vs. what they delivered in the Dobbs decision," Cohen wrote to Newsweek in an email. "Dobbs represents a once-in-a-lifetime event in people's lives. It is also a singular event in our nation's history. Rarely does half the population lose a fundamental right that had been established by the Court a half-century earlier."

Immigration is a topic that has been in discussion for decades, primarily from the Republican Party. Cohen said immigration is a topic that is often misrepresented to "ramp up baseless fears and spread misinformation about immigration, asylum, and refuge have been a staple in GOP campaigning."

"So, a stunt like the Martha's Vinyard busing is part of a pattern that the U.S. public has come to expect," Cohen said on why the poll numbers may not have jumped as drastically for the immigration topic.

Democrats are aiming to maintain their control of the Senate, and several tight races could determine if Congress stays blue or shifts to red. Candidates on both sides are using the headlines with the Dobbs decision and the immigration issue to bolster their campaign and vie for more support from voters. In those tight races, such as the Senate races between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker in Georgia and J.D. Vance and Tim Ryan in Ohio, both abortion and immigration are discussed in heated debates. In many of the tight races, the Republican candidates are endorsed by former President Donald Trump, and they tend to implement his rigid stance on topics such as immigration.

However, the poll only examined how important the topic was to a voter, not how likely they were to vote Republican or Democrat.

"How either issue will play in the election remains to be seen," Cohen said.