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Memo to Congressional Democrats: Abolishing ICE Is the Moderate Position
If a Democrat on Capitol Hill endorses anything less than the elimination of ICE, the media and advocacy groups need to point out that they are in the fringe of the party.
Jan 30, 2026
Often times, the followers in a political party are far ahead of where their leadership is. This is indeed the case regarding the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill talk about reforming ICE and making changes in how ICE operates, rank and file Democrats have concluded that ICE must be abolished.
In polling conducted by YouGov on January, just under two-thirds of Democrats (62%) strongly support abolishing ICE while 14% somewhat support abolishing ICE. The bottom line here is that more than three-quarters of Democratic voters (76%) support doing away with ICE.
The only accurate way to describe Democratic support for abolishing ICE is that it is the overwhelmingly mainstream Democratic position. If a Democrat on Capitol Hill endorses anything less than the elimination of ICE, the media and advocacy groups need to point out that they are in the fringe of the party.
A Democratic member of Congress may argue that in order to win they need not only Democratic votes, but Independents as well. There is good news here for ICE opponents. Independent voters, though certainly not as supportive of abolishing ICE as Democrats, do support abolishing ICE. According to the YouGov polling, just over 1 in 3 (35%) of Independent voters strongly support abolishing ICE, while 12% of Independents somewhat support abolishing ICE. The bottom line here is that a 47% plurality of Independent voters support abolishing ICE.
I would hope that Democrats on Capitol Hill would take substantial political comfort in deciding to vote to eliminate ICE.
Successful politics is always about adding people to your coalition. The polling data from YouGov clearly shows that it is easy to build a strong coalition with Democratic and Independent voters to support abolishing ICE. I would suggest that anyone who tells you otherwise is either disingenuous or can not do the simple arithmetic.
Democratic support for abolishing ICE is so great that almost any Democratic member of Congress who fails to support the abolition of ICE could easily face a primary challenge. The dividing lines are that clear.
I would hope that Democrats on Capitol Hill would take substantial political comfort in deciding to vote to eliminate ICE. Abolishing ICE is strongly supported by the majority of Democrats. To any Democrat thinking of compromising on the abolition of ICE, I would ask if you are not going to support something that has the support of 76% of your party, are you really a Democrat?
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Majority of Democratic Voters Believe Israel's US-Backed Gaza Assault Is 'Genocide': Poll
"The Democratic establishment is dysfunctionally out of touch with its voters on this issue," said one strategist.
May 08, 2024
A day after U.S. President Joe Biden commemorated the Holocaust, speaking about Americans' "obligation to learn the lessons of history" to ensure another mass slaughter of a religious or ethnic group never takes place, new polling showed the majority of U.S. voters whose support Biden is counting on in November believe Israel—with U.S. backing—is now committing genocide.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan's new media organization, Zeteo, partnered with progressive think tank Data for Progress to poll 1,265 U.S. voters from April 26-29, as Israel's ground invasion of Rafah loomed, threatening more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza who have been forcibly displaced since October.
The poll released Wednesday found that 56% of Democratic voters believe Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians in the enclave, where in addition to constant bombings and ground attacks, residents have faced Israel's blockade on nearly all humanitarian aid. The blockade has pushed northern Gaza into famine and is causing acute food insecurity among the entire population.
Nearly 40% of all voters believe Israel is committing a genocide, and 7 in 10 support a permanent cease-fire.
More than 50% of voters said Israel's full-scale assault on Gaza, where 2.3 million Palestinians live, has been ineffective at bringing the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 to safety.
Fifty-four percent said they support suspending all U.S. arms sales to Israel until it stops blocking American humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Such a suspension would be in accordance with Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.
Israel and the U.S. have repeatedly claimed that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is taking steps to protect the lives of civilians—even as the world has learned of mass graves found with the bodies of Palestinian women and children, some with their hands tied behind their backs. In April, Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine reported that military officials have permitted up to 100 civilian deaths for every Hamas member killed, and that the IDF has targeted Hamas fighters in their homes instead of at military outposts.
The Zeteo/Data for Progress poll was released more than four months after the International Court of Justice announced an interim ruling that Israel is "plausibly" committing genocide, which came after South Africa brought its case to the United Nations court.
South African attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi gave a 22-minute speech during the hearing, cataloging the numerous genocidal statements made by top Israeli officials since October, up to that point. Last week, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the "total annihilation" of Gaza cities including Rafah.
The poll was also released as mass protests continued on college campuses across the U.S., with police aggressively cracking down at many schools as they ignore attacks on students by pro-Israel mobs, as in the case of University of California, Los Angeles last week.
A separate poll released Wednesday by USA Today and Suffolk University found that Democratic voters are split in their views of the movement. Thirty percent supported the protests, while 39% agreed with their demands but questioned some of their tactics. Two-thirds of respondents said they feared more violent confrontations would arise from the protests.
The Data for Progress survey is the latest sign that Biden, who signed a foreign aid package including $17 billion in additional military aid for Israel last month, faces widespread discontent among the coalition of voters that supported him in 2020. In January, The Economist and YouGov found that a full 50% of people who voted for him believed Israel was committing genocide.
More than 100,000 Democratic primary voters in Michigan—which Biden won by just 150,000 votes in 2020—voted for "uncommitted" on their ballots in February, hoping to send the message to the president that U.S. support for Israel must end. Similar results were seen in primaries in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Washington state.
Strategist Nadia Rahman said the poll shows the Democratic establishment is "dysfunctionally out of touch with its voters on this issue."
"This is some of the clearest data yet that there's a massive disconnect between the media and what's happening on the ground," said journalist Ed Oswald. "And why yes, Biden's re-election is in big trouble."
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Strong Majority of Democratic Voters Agree: Sanders Should Fight to the End
'We intend to fight for every vote in front of us,' Sanders said
May 03, 2016
A new poll reveals that most left-leaning voters want Bernie Sanders to stay in the presidential race.
Just as the Vermont senator is promising to take his candidacy to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia in July—and contest the delegate allocation if necessary—voters around the country are expressing how much they believe in him and what his candidacy represents.
According to the NBC News/SurveyMonkey survey released Tuesday, 89 percent of Sanders supporters say they would like to see him stay in the race until July, with 57 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters agreeing.
The poll also finds a "sizeable" 28 percent of rival Hillary Clinton's base wanting the same.
Meanwhile, only 25 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters think he should drop out after the final primary in June if he is still behind.
Clinton currently leads Sanders by about 300 pledged delegates, with over 1,000 still available.
The poll comes as Indiana voters prepare to cast their ballots in Tuesday's primary. Sanders held a rally in downtown Indianapolis on Monday, telling the crowd, "As of today, in what I call earned delegates, the delegates that you earn after a primary or a caucus, we have won about 45 percent of them. There are 10 states left, and we have to earn over 50 percent of those delegates, and that's what Indiana is important for. And we will fight as hard as we can for every vote."
On Sunday, Sanders said he would continue pushing superdelegates to switch their allegiance to his campaign, telling an interviewer, "We intend to fight for every vote in front of us and every delegate remaining."
The poll of 12,462 registered voters was conducted online April 25 to May 1, 2016, with an error margin of +/- 1.2 percentage points.
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