During MSNBC’s Super Tuesday coverage, host Rachel Maddow and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki expressed their surprise over exit polls showing immigration is a top concern for Virginians.
“I mean, if you look at some of these exit polls — I mean, I live in Virginia. Immigration was the No. 1 issue,” Psaki, host of Inside With Jen Psaki, said on Tuesday evening.
“Again, these could change,” Psaki added about the exit polls.
“Well, Virginia does have a border with West Virginia,” Maddow quipped, sitting between Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace.
About 4 in 10 Republican primary voters in both Virginia and North Carolina said immigration was their top concern, according to an early exit poll from the Washington Post conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool. A recent Gallup poll showed 28% of voters named immigration as the country’s top problem, up from about 20% in January.
Immigration has become a central platform in the 2024 election, presenting a major weakness for President Joe Biden. Over 8 million asylum-seekers and other migrants will reside in the United States by the end of September, internal government projections obtained by Axios show, marking a 167% increase over the span of five years.
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Former President Donald Trump has been vocal about his stance on immigration, promising extreme restrictions on the border if he’s elected in 2024. Around half of voters in Virginia’s Republican primary expressed skepticism about the legitimacy of Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, according to the early exit polls.
In 2020, Biden won Virginia with 54.1% compared to Trump’s 44%. Biden and Trump both won their respective primaries in the state on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.
