The Democrats are playing the “long game” with their immigration policies, wagering on dividends from changing the makeup of the US population, Dr. Nicholas Waddy, associate professor of history at SUNY Alfred and Trump supporter, told Sputnik.
“Immigration in general, whether it's legal or illegal, changes the fabric of America. For example, the percentage of the electorate that is white, non-Hispanic white, has declined from about 90% down to less than 70% in the last election. That's a huge advantage for Democrats,” Waddy noted.
States like Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada, which used to be “red” states, have become “purple," or "swing" states, the pundit explained, “because their populations have changed over time.”
“[Democrats] know that they win more votes among immigrants, among people of color,” and believe that “if they can bend the curve demographically and change the population of the United States, that's going to pay dividends for them,” Waddy maintained.
Some exit polls during the 2020 election showed that 65% of migrants voted for Biden, while 32% voted for Trump.
“A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote. They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in, practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote. And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country,” said Trump in September.
SpaceX CEO and X owner Elon Musk, who threw his weight behind Trump in the summer, similarly warned on social media that and “the Biden/Harris administration has been flying ‘asylum seekers’, who are fast-tracked to citizenship, directly into swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Arizona. It is a surefire way to win every election.”
Trump vowed to “end this border nightmare” in his Republican National Committee (RNC) 2024 acceptance speech in July.
“The Democrats are playing a long game. I think Republicans have not adequately supported the charge that there are a large number of non-citizens voting. But from the Democratic perspective, eventually they'll become citizens and eventually they will vote,” said Nicholas Waddy.
Furthermore, Democratic lawmakers have been actively campaigning to pass voting rights legislation in Congress aimed at reducing or eliminating election restrictions. They argue that strict identification requirements and in-person voting, often championed by Republicans, hinder low-income individuals, African Americans, and other minority groups from exercising their right to vote.
Republicans are understandably concerned about Democrats employing tricks such as a “fraudulent turnout of people who are not eligible to vote, or people that don't exist using somebody else's identity, for example, a dead person's identity," American political analyst Don Debar told Sputnik.
"This is not so uncommon,” he said.
The Dems present the GOP's attempts to “tamp down incidents of fraud by requiring people to present legal ID or any other extra step that has to be taken” as an effort "to chill turnout," the pundit said.
He referenced an opinion, ostensibly backed by historical data, that “the larger the turnout in a presidential election, the better the Democratic Party does and the lower the turnout, the better the Republican Party does.”
As for the Democrat-advocated watering down or abolishment of strict ID rules, the pundit noted that “most people in the world are required to produce some sort of proof of who they are when they go to vote, for the obvious reasons. But that is not the case here.”