The #1 Issue for New Hampshire Voters Gives Trump A Big Advantage
Hint: it's not the economy
The conventional media narrative about Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary goes like this: unlike Iowa, New Hampshire is a moderate state, a gift to centrists like Nikki Haley and a disadvantage for the polarizing Donald Trump.
This narrative, valued reader, is the product of what I like to call “media brain”: a harrowing condition where spurious ideas through sheer repetition in the news come to be accepted as common sense.
While it’s true that New Hampshire is significantly less Evangelical than other states, resulting in an electorate more moderate on abortion than that of Iowa, there’s one issue that unites Republicans of both states.
That issue is immigration.
New Hampshire primary voters identified immigration as their top voting issue, not crime, abortion, or even inflation, according to a Monmouth University/Washington Post poll. A raft of other polls echoed similar results, making clear that immigration is at the top of New Hampshire Republicans’ minds. Even in New England, far from the southern border, New Hampshire voters consistently cite immigration as their number one concern.
And Trump knows it.
In his speech after winning the Iowa caucus, Trump employed some of his most extreme immigration rhetoric yet.
“We’re going to seal up the border because right now we have an invasion, we have an invasion of millions and millions of people that are coming into our country,” Trump said. “And they’re coming from prisons and jails…they’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
We had a foreshadowing of this rhetoric from a little-noticed and surprisingly candid interview by a high-level Trump national security appointee, Kash Patel, as readers of this newsletter know. In that interview, Patel, who will in all likelihood serve in a top role in a second Trump term, said that Trump is “going to implement the largest deportation in U.S. history.”
Trump, in his Iowa victory speech days later, echoed Patel’s remarks: “We’re going to have to have a deportation level that we haven’t seen in this country for a long time since Dwight Eisenhower actually.”
Trump’s immigration rhetoric gets scant attention in the media for reasons that are understandable but misguided. CNN refused to broadcast Trump’s entire victory speech for fear of spreading his “falsehoods and conspiracies,” as The New York Times reported. Trump’s rhetoric is indeed hair raising. But roughly half of Americans agree with it; and by refusing to offer a better explanation of how to solve an issue that the United Nations has deemed a “serious” “humanitarian situation,” the issue is ceded to Trump.
Citizens Count, a nonprofit that “provides the people of New Hampshire with the tools and information they need to make a difference,” one that is sponsored by everyone from Lindt Chocolate to Bank of America, has an issues page that tells the good people of the Granite State how to think about 50 issues from abortion to water — and doesn’t even mention immigration.
Nikki Haley has little to say about Trump’s immigration policy, instead hitting him on his mental fitness — an attack President Joe Biden cosigned.
And the issue just got supercharged. Today, the Supreme Court narrowly granted the federal government authority to cut down concertina wire designed to keep migrants from crossing the Texas-Mexico border. The decision immediately generated breathless coverage that will be wind at Trump’s back in New Hampshire.
That immigration tops the economy as Republicans’ number one concern is nothing short of astounding, and that the major media can’t see it is both nothing short of astounding and also par for the course.
Hi Ken, thank you for giving attention to how just embarrassing it is that NH voters’ top concern is immigration. As a NH native, I can safely say that this is the least surprising thing I’ve heard when I found out about it. This is one of the whitest states in the country and it’s nearly as far away from the southern border as you can possibly go. And yet, of course it’s the top concern of voters there. It’s very frustrating watching people from my home act so stupidly. I don’t know how else to describe these people’s behavior other than stupid. You were able to write effectively about something that’s been eating at me since I first found out about the priorities of New Hampshirites. If NH can be convinced that the most pressing issue of our times is something that none of them will ever experience a legitimate problem with, then I am really worried about how bad the rest of the country is going to be about this stuff. So thank you for putting my frustration into words.
Are ordinary Americans actually affected or touched in any way by the migrants coming into the country? Like, especially. People in New Hampshire? They, along with many other American citizens, seem to be terrified of "the other" without any clear knowledge or understanding of who the migrants are. But are any migrants near enough for the scared people to know them? C'mon, people! Think. Consider the reality. The migrants are just people seeking a better life for themselves and their families. We Americans should feel flattered that they've chosen our country to flee to. Despite our many problems (racism, gun violence, substance abuse, greed, income inequality, excessive militarism and intent to rule the world, etc.) people around the world choose to come here, believing they will have a better chance to thrive than in their home countries. That says a lot! We should welcome them and support them in their quests.