In the wake of the shooting death of Renee Good in Minneapolis, a YouGov and The Economist poll finds 46% of Americans – a plurality – are in favor of abolishing ICE, while only 43% want to keep it, reports Newsweek. With Democrats certainly calling for the abolishment of ICE, the poll found that 47% of Independents are also in favor, 12 points above those who oppose getting rid of the federal agency.
AFN wondered if the constant drumbeat of negative ICE coverage from the news networks was having an effect on Americans. Even Vice President J.D. Vance had something to say to the media for their portrayal of the Minneapolis shooting. As previously reported by AFN, he gave an example of an article from CNN, titled “Outrage after ICE Officer Kills U.S. Citizen in Minneapolis.”
“The way that the media, by and large, has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace, and it puts out law enforcement officers at risk every single day,” said Vance.
Despite the negative media influence, Bill D'Agostino of Media Research Center says that the poll is actually flawed.
“They oversampled Democrats by eight points. And if you look at the actual breakdown of the last election that we had, the 2024 election, if anything you should be oversampling Republicans by two points,” states D'Agostino.
He says pollsters regularly and correctly adjust their polls to account for the difference between who responds to a poll and the actual — in this case political — makeup of the community. D'Agostino point out that, when one corrects the error, a completely different picture emerges.
“Actually about 54% to 56-57% of Americans pretty much always, consistently, over the last year have said they support mass deportation,” informs D'Agostino.
He says that YouGov is what is known as a push poll.
“YouGov, I really consider to be more interested in influencing opinion with polls rather than gauging public opinion,” says D'Agostino.
