A growing share of GOP voters see diversity as threatening to American culture, CNN poll finds

By Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN

(CNN) — Two-thirds of registered voters say that the increasing number of people of different races, ethnic groups and nationalities in the United States serves to enrich the nation’s culture, the latest CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds. But a rising minority, centered largely within the Republican Party, say they see it as more of a cultural threat.

Openness or hostility to rising diversity serves as a clear dividing line between voters supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming presidential election and those backing former President Donald Trump. A 56% majority of Trump supporters say that growing diversity is threatening American culture, while just 10% of Harris’ backers say the same.

The findings come amid the Trump campaign’s repeated political attacks on immigrants to the US, including those legally in the country. Trump used his first debate against Harris to amplify baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, that have since been disavowed by other GOP politicians. Those claims were earlier elevated by his running mate JD Vance, who has said he would continue to refer to those Haitian immigrants as “illegal aliens,” even though most have entered the United States legally.

The Harris campaign has also tried to make a case on immigration, with the vice president, who plans to visit the US-Mexico border on Friday while in Arizona, attacking Trump’s call for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

The latest CNN poll also finds that a 54% majority of registered voters – including 80% of Trump supporters and 26% of Harris supporters – say that the federal government “does too much” for immigrants who come to the United States, with about a quarter saying that the government isn’t doing enough. Roughly 4 in 10 Harris supporters say the US should do more for immigrants, with just 9% of Trump backers saying the same.

But views of increasing racial and ethnic diversity as a cultural threat are not universal across Trump’s supporters. They are particularly prevalent among the former president’s strongest backers, and less widespread among the youngest voters supporting him. Among registered voters who say they are voting for Trump mostly to oppose Harris, 44% 44% call a diversifying America threatening, compared with 61% among those who say they’re voting mostly to show support for the former president. And 45% of Trump backers younger than 35 call it a threat, compared with 59% of those 35 and older.

Overall, the poll finds a notable shift in the GOP’s outlook on the nation’s increasing diversity since before Trump won the presidency in 2016.

In the latest poll, 53% of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters say they consider growing diversity a cultural threat. While that number has fluctuated over the past eight years, it’s the first time over that period that a majority of Republican-aligned voters have taken that position. In the summer of 2016, as Trump clinched the GOP presidential nomination, it was 39%; that dipped to 20% in 2019 before rising to 40% last spring amid the run-up to the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

By contrast, there’s been relatively less movement among Democratic-aligned voters: In the latest survey, 86% say rising diversity enriches American culture, down from the near-universal 94% who said so in 2019 but similar to the 82% who said the same in 2016. (The 2023 survey focused solely on Republican-aligned adults.)

Among likely voters in this year’s election, Harris leads Trump by a 15-point margin, 48% to 33%, on trust to handle racial inequality in the US, while Trump has a 14-point advantage, 49% to 35%, on trust to handle immigration.

Likely voters backing Trump overwhelmingly say they trust him to handle immigration – 95% say he’d do a better job of handling the issue, including 92% of Trump supporters who say increasing diversity is enriching the culture. His backers are somewhat less universally behind him on handling racial inequality, with only about two-thirds saying he’d do a better job handling it. Among those Trump supporters who see diversity as a benefit to American culture, that ticks further down to 58%, with 10% saying they put more trust in Harris and 32% that they trust neither candidate on the issue.

The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS online and by telephone September 19-22, 2024, among 2,074 registered voters nationwide drawn from a probability-based panel. Likely voters include all registered voters in the poll weighted for their predicted likelihood of voting in this year’s election. Results for the full sample of registered voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points. It is the same among likely voters and larger for subgroups.

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