More in Common Report: The Complex Views of Trump’s “Reluctant Right” on Immigration and ICE

​More in Common US released focus group findings with “Reluctant Right” voters, the least ideological and most ambivalent fifth of Trump’s 2024 coalition, revealing nuanced perspectives on immigration enforcement. These voters criticize extreme tactics while supporting restrictive approaches and distinguish between Trump and ICE accountability. The research identifies four themes: losing faith in enforcement tactics while supporting Trump, trusting bipartisanship, advocating for reforming ICE due to concerns about hiring standards and training, and pervasive low trust in media and institutions creating uncertainty about competing narratives. This research positions the Reluctant Right as a signal for Trump coalition stability and demonstrates how qualitative methods reveal complexity often missed by polling. It advances NCDD’s mission by helping Americans understand perspectives across partisan divides, identifying potential areas for bipartisan solutions, and modeling research approaches that surface nuance, ambivalence, and complexity essential for bridging divides and developing democratic solutions grounded in diverse voter thinking.

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More in Common US has released findings from focus groups with "Reluctant Right" voters—representing a fifth of President Trump's 2024 coalition and his least ideological, least loyal supporters—examining their perspectives on immigration enforcement following events in Minneapolis. The research, part of More in Common's Beyond MAGA report providing detailed segmentation of Trump voters, reveals nuanced views that challenge partisan caricatures: while participants expressed skepticism of enforcement tactics they described as "extreme" and voiced horror at specific incidents including detention of a five-year-old child, they distinguished between President Trump and ICE agents, with disagreement over accountability and continued support for more restrictive immigration approaches overall. The focus groups included Independents and Republicans from Connecticut to New Mexico, offering insights into how a key ambivalent segment of Trump's coalition is processing contested issues during a period when two-thirds of Americans feel ICE has gone "too far."

The research identifies four major themes shaping Reluctant Right perspectives on immigration enforcement. First, participants are losing faith in enforcement tactics while maintaining support for President Trump, describing enforcement as needing "a more controlled approach" and questioning whether door-to-door operations and school-based detentions are necessary, yet appreciating that Trump was "backing down" and "getting a lot of criminals." Second, participants expressed more trust in bipartisanship than either party, with no one viewing Democrats as a viable alternative due to perceptions of lax enforcement, while calling for long-term solutions requiring both parties to "reach across the aisles." Third, participants nearly universally advocated for reforming rather than abolishing ICE, citing concerns about low hiring standards and a lack of rigorous training compared to other law enforcement agencies. Fourth, low social and institutional trust pervaded the conversation, with participants feeling "taken advantage of" by mainstream media providing only partial stories and expressing uncertainty about protesters' intentions amid competing narratives.

More in Common frames this research as part of a pilot series of focus groups shedding light on how different groups of Americans think about contested issues, providing deeper insights than daily news cycles and pointing toward possible solutions. The organization positions the Reluctant Right as a signal for the state of Trump's coalition over the next three years, as this most ambivalent type of Trump voter will likely oscillate between holding together and breaking apart. By publishing transcripts allowing Americans to hear directly from voters with perspectives different from their own, More in Common addresses the challenge of understanding why others believe what they do in a polarized country. This research demonstrates the value of qualitative methods for revealing complexity and nuance that quantitative polling often misses, showing how voters can simultaneously criticize enforcement methods while supporting restrictive approaches, question accountability while maintaining loyalty, and distrust both parties while calling for bipartisan solutions.

To read the full focus group transcript and More in Common's Beyond MAGA report, visit https://www.moreincommonus.com