Will Harris’ Shift to the Right on Immigration Pay Off?
On October 3, 2024, former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) gave the opening speech for a presidential campaign stop in Ripon, Wisconsin—the birthplace of the Republican Party. This speech, however, was not in favor of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump but rather for the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris.
Congresswomen Cheney, along with her father, George W. Bush’s former Vice President Dick Cheney, are part of a growing coalition of Republican public officials who have crossed party lines to voice their support for the Democratic ticket. With many polls indicating that the race is still too close to call, the Harris team has tried to gain a decisive edge over Trump in key swing states by appealing to Republican voters dissatisfied with the former president, such as the 22% who voted for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley on Super Tuesday in the 2024 Republican primary. To win over these Republicans who the Democrats believe can be convinced to vote for Harris, the campaign has shifted its messaging and policy.
Among the other “Republicans for Harris” are former Trump staff members such as White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci and White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, the latter of whom had a major speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in August of 2024. In addition, scores of former Reagan, Romney, McCain, and Bush staffers have endorsed Harris in the 2024 election. The Harris campaign has proudly touted this support from across the aisle, with running mate Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) celebrating the support of Vice President Cheney from the stage of his debate with Senator JD Vance (R-OH) in October of 2024. When asked what she would do differently from the Biden administration, Harris promised to appoint a Republican to her cabinet as well as create a council of bipartisan advisors. The Harris campaign is making a concerted effort to publicly reach across the aisle and show Republicans that they are welcome in the Democratic coalition. This messaging campaign, however, is only half of a larger strategy that involves changes to the party platform meant to appeal to conservatives.
Immigration is a key issue on which the Harris campaign has adopted a more conservative stance to attract moderate Republican voters. Rather than utilizing the humanitarian appeals that Biden used against Trump’s harsh immigration policies in 2020, pressure from the Republican Party has pushed Democrats to instead frame immigration more as a national security issue. In 2020, Biden ran against Trump’s restrictions on immigration and asylum seekers, and strongly supported a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. This helped him win crucial swing states like Arizona, where Latino voters cast a quarter of all ballots in the 2020 election. During the Trump administration, Harris also called the border wall “un-American.” Over the course of the Biden presidency as well as the current presidential campaign, however, the Democratic Party seems to have turned away from these goals in order to pick up voters who appear to have become more conservative on immigration.
This comes as 28% of respondents to Gallup’s monthly polls reported immigration as their top national concern, the highest percentage since they started compiling mentions of the issue in 1981. Harris’s visit to the southern border at the end of August demonstrates how she wants to appear tough on this key issue as Republicans continue to denounce how the Democratic Party has handled the border. The Trump campaign has repeatedly criticized the vice president in her role as “border czar,” claiming that 21 million migrants have come into the United States since the start of the Biden administration, which has been proven incorrect. Rather, the total number of unauthorized immigrants increased from an estimated 10.2 million in 2019 to 11.0 million in 2022– far less than Trump’s exaggerated numbers. This Republican messaging campaign has still proved effective, however, as 49% of Americans believe that Trump would do better on the issue compared to 35% for Harris. So, the Democratic Party has altered its platform and adopted Republican policies and framing on immigration to win over more conservative voters.
Harris’s border bill is the most aggressive example of this rightward shift. In early 2024, Senate Republicans and Democrats unveiled their bipartisan immigration legislation that would give the president the power to shut down the border if crossings reach a certain number, increase restrictions on asylum seekers, hire additional border agents, and resume construction of the border wall. Before its official release, Senator James Lankford (R-OK), a key negotiator on the bill, called it “by far the most conservative border security bill in four decades.” If elected president, Harris says she would work with Congress to pass this bill.
After Trump pressured Republican lawmakers to block the legislation, however, even Lankford would go on to criticize the bill and the Democratic agenda on immigration. Harris’s Republican critics continue to argue that the bill would not do enough to stop immigrants coming over the border, and some, such as Sen. Lankford, say that a complete closure of the border is necessary. This did not stop Walz from evoking the senator’s party status from the debate stage to demonstrate the supposed bipartisan nature of the legislation. Despite the GOP’s rejection of the border bill, Democrats continue to spotlight its origins from the Republican immigration agenda to show conservative voters that Harris can also be tough on immigration.
At a time when Harris is leading Trump among Hispanic voters by the smallest margins of any recent Democratic Party candidate, it is important that the campaign promote policies and messages that appeal to them, as well as the Republican voters they are trying to court. Georgia and Arizona, two swing states in the upcoming election, will have record numbers of Latino voters casting votes. For Latino voters, providing a pathway to citizenship for long-term undocumented migrants is a key concern, and border security ranks lower on their priorities. While the Harris campaign website does call for an “earned pathway to citizenship," this is not included in the border bill, which she and Walz say she would sign into law as is. The prominence of the border bill compared to citizenship for undocumented migrants in Harris’s messaging shows a prioritization of conservative voters over Latino voters who have historically supported the Democratic party. The Harris campaign might predict that they will lose little support from Latino voters to Trump as he has ramped up his anti-immigration rhetoric and policies, but they can easily make up for this loss with Republicans voters who are dissatisfied with Trump.
Even though Harris has adopted policies on immigration into her platform that were previously championed by Republicans, the Trump campaign has not halted its critiques of Democrats for being “too soft” on immigration. Since 2020, both the Democratic and Republican tickers have shifted to the right on immigration, which might leave parts of the electorate’s views on the issue unrepresented by either party and could lead to worrying outcomes for migrants attempting to enter the country and those already residing and working in the United States.
In stark contrast to Biden’s 2020 campaign, which attempted to point out the danger of Trump’s immigration policies in effect at the time, Harris is attempting to appeal to Republican voters that have turned against Trump through increasingly restrictive border security measures. The efficacy of Harris’s strategy, however, is yet to be revealed, as her poll numbers have remained consistent since she became the presumptive nominee.
As the Democrats try to appeal to different voting blocs during the 2024 campaign than those in 2020, they must also consider the longevity of such a coalition for future elections. Trump says he will not run again in 2028 if he loses in November, so how will the Democrats execute a strategy of winning over Republican voters if the future GOP nominee is not as polarizing as Trump? The overlooking of traditional Democratic Party voting blocs such as Latinos might also present an opportunity for Republicans to shore up support among these voters. They have already implemented this approach in Michigan with appeals to Arab and Muslim-Americans that are critical of the Biden administration’s continued support for Israel throughout the assaults on Gaza and Lebanon. The election night results will show how effective these different campaign strategies have been and will certainly alter how the Democrats and Republicans attempt to win elections in the future.