Immigration's impact on the 2024 Election

WASHINGTON (TNND) — Now that the 2024 Election has ended, analysts are digging into the data to learn what drove voters to their decisions and what issues were top of mind.

According to some exit polling, "About 4 in 10 voters considered the economy and jobs to be the most important problem facing the country, as frustration with inflation spiking in 2022 lingered in the form of higher grocery, housing and gasoline costs. Roughly 2 in 10 voters said the top issue is immigration, and about 1 in 10 picked abortion."

Immigration has been an issue some say was easier to ignore before but policy changes over the last few years have changed that.

In April 2022,Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas,announced a new plan that, at the time, shocked the nation.

Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off by the Biden Administration to Washington D.C.”

Abbott’s plan to send undocumented migrants awayfrom Texas extended far beyond the nation’s Capitol from Denver to Chicago to Philadelphia to New York City, where Mayor Eric Adams warned the issue would "destroy New York City."

"We’re getting 10,000 migrants a month," he said at a Sept. 2023 news conference.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s margin of victory in New York City was still 37 points higher than Donald Trump.

But four years ago, Joe Biden won by 54 points and Hillary Clinton had a 63-point margin in 2016.

Many believe the policy of bussing migrants accelerated the notion of every town being a border town.

"It emphasized the urgency of the problem," said Isabel Soto, policy director for The Libre Initiative, in an interview with The National News Desk Thursday. "The border crisis has been a crisis for a while but it is in some ways almost convenient for certain states in the north to be able to ignore it, not necessarily intentionally but because it’s not literally in their backyard. People in the Northeast, in New England, don’t have migrants walking across their private property. That’s not something that happens on the day-to-day."

Boston city leaders struggled to balance their desire to be welcoming with shrinking budgets and shifting demands from residents.

In an interview with Fox News in February, Worcester resident Keisha Effee, said, "Don't get me wrong, it’s great they want to help the immigrants but what about the Americans that are already here."

Despite a campaign season marked by tough talk from President-elect Donald Trump on the border that includes plans to close the border, build migrant detention camps and launch a mass deportation program, exit polls show support from Latinos broke recordswith 46% backing Trump.

“When we have a presidential administration that sees record high inflation that actually disproportionally hurts communities of color, and you have another candidate coming in and saying 'I will fix this.' That’s a message that’s gonna work," Soto said.