Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Biden Back On Top: President Beats Trump By 1 Point In Latest 2024 Election Poll, How Immigration Efforts Are Helping To Win Over Voters
Benzinga Staff Writer
June 16, 2024

In less than five months, voters will head to the polls to choose between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

Many election polls continue to show a close race between the two front-running candidates in the race.

What Happened: Biden has gained support from independent voters in several recent polls after Trump was found guilty on 34 counts in a criminal trial alleging he had falsified business records.

A new Morning Consult poll of nationally registered voters shows the following results in the head-to-head matchup of Biden and Trump, with the results from the June 4 poll in parentheses:

Joe Biden: 44% (43%)

Donald Trump: 43% (44%)

Someone Else: 8% (8%)

Don't Know: 5% (5%)

Of the Democratic voters polled, 86% have Biden as their top pick, which is down four percentage points from the previous poll. Eighty-seven percent of Republican voters polled have Trump as their top pick, which was down one percentage point from last week's poll.

Independent voters, who could decide the election, selected their 2024 pick as follows, with the June 4 results in parentheses:

Joe Biden: 34% (34%)

Donald Trump: 37% (35%)

Someone Else: 18% (21%)

Don't Know: 11% (11%)

Related Link: Biden, Trump Should Both Drop Out Of 2024 Election, Leading Pollster Says: ‘Country Would Be Better Served’

Why It's Important: The latest poll gives Biden a rare lead, showing he’s closed the gap with Trump in recent months. This marks the first lead for Biden in the Morning Consult head-to-head poll since early May.

After Trump dominated Biden in head-to-head polls in January and February, Biden has narrowed the gap to one point, tied, or, in some cases, taken a lead over Trump in recent polls.

For the sixth consecutive week, Biden’s net favorability rating has been ahead of Trump’s, marking Biden’s longest streak since April 2023. This follows Trump’s hush money trial in New York. Trump hit his lowest net favorability rating since January.

In the latest poll, net buzz about immigration improved by eight points, with more people hearing what they perceived was positive than negative news. The eight-point gain comes after Biden announced new restrictions on asylum for people who cross the southern border illegally.

The net buzz for immigration hit its best mark since November 2023 in the Morning Consult weekly survey.

With immigration expected to be a big topic in the 2024 election, Biden's latest move may have helped win over voters.

The poll showed that 37% of voters approve of Biden's handling of immigration compared to 35% prior to his latest executive action.

The two candidates are set to face off in their first 2024 presidential debate on June 27. The debate will air on CNN, a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Read Next: Michelle Obama Smokes Robert Kennedy Jr. In Presidential Race Match-Up

© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.


President Joe Biden to announce deportation protection and work permits for spouses of US citizens

The policy will allow roughly 490,000 spouses of US citizens an opportunity to apply for a “parole in place” programme, which would shield them from deportations and offer them work permits if they have lived in the country for at least 10 years

AP Washington Published 18.06.24

Joe BidenFile

President Joe Biden is planning to announce a sweeping new policy Tuesday that would lift the threat of deportation for tens of thousands of people married to US citizens, an aggressive election-year action on immigration that had been sought by many Democrats

Biden was hosting a White House event to celebrate an Obama-era directive that offered deportation protections for young undocumented immigrants and will announce the new programme then, according to three people briefed on the White House plans.

The policy will allow roughly 490,000 spouses of US citizens an opportunity to apply for a “parole in place” programme, which would shield them from deportations and offer them work permits if they have lived in the country for at least 10 years, according to two of the people briefed.

They all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the announcement publicly.

The White House on Monday declined to comment on the announcement.

Families who would potentially benefit from Biden's actions were expected to attend the White House event on Tuesday afternoon

For some time, administration officials have been deliberating various options to offer protections for immigrants who lack legal status in the US but who have longstanding ties — even after the White House crafted a restrictive proposal that essentially halted asylum processing at the US-Mexico border.

Biden is invoking an authority that not only gives deportation protections and work permits, but removes a legal barrier to allow qualifying immigrants to apply for permanent residency and eventually, US citizenship.

It's a power that's already been used for other categories of immigrants, such as members of the US military or their family members who lack legal status.

“Today, I have spoken about what we need to do to secure the border,” Biden said at a June 4 event at the White House, when he rolled out his order to suspend asylum processing for many migrants arriving now to the US “In the weeks ahead — and I mean the weeks ahead — I will speak to how we can make our immigration system more fair and more just.”

Biden was also expected to announce a policy of making recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme eligible for visas, rather than the temporary work authorization they currently receive, according to two of the people briefed.

In Congress, a Democratic group of lawmakers called the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has advocated for a policy of making graduates of US colleges who came to the country without authorisation as children eligible for work visas as well.

The White House on Tuesday afternoon was to mark the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, which was created by then-President Barack Obama to protect young immigrants who lacked legal status, often known as “dreamers.”

Half a million immigrants could eventually get US citizenship under new plan from Biden

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is taking an expansive, election-year step to offer relief to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status in the U.S.
President Joe Biden listens as he meets with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the Oval Office at the White House, Monday, June 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is taking an expansive, election-year step to offer relief to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status in the U.S. — aiming to balance his own aggressive crackdown on the border earlier this month that enraged advocates and many Democratic lawmakers.

The White House announced Tuesday that the Biden administration will, in the coming months, allow certain spouses of U.S. citizens without legal status to apply for permanent residency and eventually, citizenship. The move could affect upwards of half a million immigrants, according to senior administration officials.

To qualify, an immigrant must have lived in the United States for 10 years as of Monday and be married to a U.S. citizen. If a qualifying immigrant’s application is approved, he or she would have three years to apply for a green card, and receive a temporary work permit and be shielded from deportation in the meantime.

About 50,000 noncitizen children with a parent who is married to a U.S. citizen could also potentially qualify for the same process, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the proposal on condition of anonymity. There is no requirement on how long the couple must have been married, and no one becomes eligible after Monday. That means immigrants who reach that 10 year mark any time after June 17, 2024, will not qualify for the program, according to the officials.

Senior administration officials said they anticipate the process will be open for applications by the end of the summer, and fees to apply have yet to be determined.

Biden will speak about his plans at a Tuesday afternoon event at the White House, which will also mark the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a popular Obama-era directive that offered deportation protections and temporary work permits for young immigrants who lack legal status.

White House officials privately encouraged Democrats in the House, which is in recess this week, to travel back to Washington to attend the announcement.

The president will also announce new regulations that will allow certain DACA beneficiaries and other young immigrants to more easily qualify for long-established work visas. That would allow qualifying immigrants to have protection that is sturdier than the work permits offered by DACA, which is currently facing legal challenges and is no longer taking new applications.

The power that Biden is invoking with his Tuesday announcement for spouses is not a novel one. The policy would expand on authority used by presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to allow “parole in place” for family members of military members, said Andrea Flores, a former policy adviser in the Obama and Biden administrations who is now a vice president at FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization.

The parole-in-place process allows qualifying immigrants to get on the path to U.S. permanent residency without leaving the country, removing a common barrier for those without legal status but married to Americans. Flores said it “fulfills President Biden’s day one promise to protect undocumented immigrants and their American families.”

Tuesday’s announcement comes two weeks after Biden unveiled a sweeping crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border that effectively halted asylum claims for those arriving between officially designated ports of entry. Immigrant-rights groups have sued the Biden administration over that directive, which a senior administration official said Monday had led to fewer border encounters between ports.

___

Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

Seung Min Kim, The Associated Press


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