Nearly two-thirds of Republicans (64%) favor the recent bipartisan border-security deal struck by Senate negotiators, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll — unless they’re told that former President Donald Trump opposes it, in which case GOP support plummets to 34%.

Republican Support for Border-Security Deal

The survey of 1,482 U.S. adults that was conducted from March 8 to 11 shows how quickly powerful politicians — particularly Trump — can sway the public when they take sides on a hot-button issue.

Revealing the ‘Trump effect’

To test the “Trump effect” on border politics, Yahoo News and YouGov split respondents into two groups. The first group read a description of the border deal that didn’t mention Trump. The second group read the same description followed by the phrase “but Donald Trump opposed the deal and it died in the Senate.”

Support Without Trump Mention

Among the first group of Americans — the ones who weren’t told about Trump’s opposition — 58% favored a “$20 billion bipartisan border deal” struck by “a group of Republican and Democratic senators” that would “raise the bar for asylum, hire more asylum officers and border security agents, make it easier to expel migrants and automatically close the border if illegal crossings reach a certain average daily threshold.” While 18% of the respondents in that group opposed the deal.

Republican Support in First Group

Among Republicans in the first group, 64% favored the deal while 19% did not.

Support Decline with Trump Mention

But those numbers were wildly different in the group that was told of Trump’s opposition. There, only 34% favored it — a decline of 30 percentage points — while 36% of those Republicans did not.

Impact on 2020 Trump Voters

The difference among 2020 Trump voters was even more drastic. In the first group, Trump voters backed the border deal by a more than two-to-one margin (57% for it compared to 27% against); in the second group, a mere 26% of Trump voters favored the deal while 44% opposed it.

Democrats and Biden Supporters

To be fair, Democrats in the two groups also had differing views on the deal; when told of Trump’s opposition, support went up by 7 points among Democrats (to 70%) and by 8 points among 2020 Biden voters (to 72%). But the effect was much smaller.

Border Deal Details and Trump's Influence

Overall, the border deal went from being favored by a majority of Americans in the first group (58%) to less than half of Americans in the second group (48%) — simply because of Trump’s opposition.

“This Bill is a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for The Republican Party,” Trump said on his Truth Social network. “It takes the HORRIBLE JOB the Democrats have done on Immigration and the Border, absolves them, and puts it all squarely on the shoulders of Republicans. Don’t be STUPID!!!”

Despite his efforts to broker a bipartisan deal, Biden’s “most of the blame” number (40%) is larger than the corresponding figures for Congress (28%), migrants (29%), the leaders of countries migrants are leaving (37%) and Trump (20%) — and it has risen by 7 points since January 2023.