Subject: Re: Trump, MAGA Abandon Border Deal
I suspect this summary is implicitly assuming a 50/50 split of voters between Democrats and Republicans and reflects the normal horserace positions the media reports as a timesaver that assumes people view Democrats as "weak" on immigration and Republicans as "tough" on immigration.

No, it's just based on what voters say:

When asked in this poll who was better at handling issues of immigration, the largest share of Americans – 41 percent – named the Republican Party. Another 29 percent said Democrats did a better job of managing this issue. Overall, another 10 percent said one party was as good as the other on immigration, and 20 percent of Americans said neither party did a good job – a sense of dissatisfaction that has grown substantially over nearly two years.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/p...

When political parties are losing on an issue, they will generally retreat into arguments about how the voters actually like lots of specific things about their policies and dislike specific positions in the opposing party. Which is all well and good - but in partisan elections, voters will base a lot of their perceptions on the "brand" of the party rather than granular policy points. The GOP has a decent brand on immigration, and the Democrats have a terrible brand on that issue. Which is why the GOP is hammering, hammering, hammering on that issue - and why Biden tried to force his party to swallow a punitive immigration bill to make the hammering stop.

Albaby