https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/1/18/2363282/-Abolish-ICE-hits-record-high-support
Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics or culture.
Abolish ICE, the erstwhile rallying cry of progressives, is rising from its ashes—and winning converts.
On Jan. 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good, an unarmed mother of three, in Minneapolis—sparking national outrage. And new data shows that not only is the public increasingly open to eliminating ICE, but now more people want to burn it down than save it.
Forty-six percent of Americans support abolishing ICE, while 43% oppose it, according to the latest YouGov/Economist poll. An overwhelming 77% of Democrats support abolition, as does a plurality of independents (47%). Even 14% of Republicans want to melt ICE.
For anyone familiar with recent political history, this new data signals a shocking turn of events.
Demands to abolish ICE previously hit their apex during the summer of 2018, as the heinous truth of President Donald Trump’s family-separation policy came to light. But those calls faded slowly, then dropped away almost entirely after Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
Biden’s term saw a record number of border crossings as well as a racist panic stoked by the Republican Party. As a result, the United States turned against immigration, and “abolish ICE” seemed lost to the sands of time.
Just last summer, only 27% of Americans supported abolishing ICE and replacing it with another agency, per a YouGov/Economist poll.
And then, on Jan. 7, an ICE agent killed Good as she drove away from him.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans have seen the video of Good’s killing, and another 22% are familiar with the video but haven’t viewed it, according to YouGov/Economist. Meanwhile, Quinnipiac University’s new poll found that 82% of registered voters have seen the video. And in both polls, around 50% say that the killing was unjustified, while around 30% say it was justified—a roughly 20-percentage-point gulf in public opinion.
Beyond that, just 31% of Americans believe that ICE’s actions are making cities safer, according to a new CNN/SSRS poll. A majority (51%) say ICE is making cities less safe, while 18% say ICE is having little effect either way. Altogether, this suggests that nearly 7 in 10 Americans don’t see a benefit to ICE’s brutality.
But will this change in public opinion lead to ICE being reigned in, if not abolished? Maybe, but definitely not before 2029.
There is no chance Trump will oversee the dismantling of ICE, so the pro-abolition movement will need staying power to see results. However, there’s good reason to believe Trump will provide just that. In the days since her slaughter, Trump has attacked Good while defending Ross, setting the stage for his gestapo to commit further atrocities.
That could dig a deeper hole for ICE, which already has the worst favorability rating among the nine government agencies featured in a recent YouGov survey. Fifty-one percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the agency, including 40% who have a “very unfavorable” view. In fact, it’s the only agency of the nine with a net-negative rating (-12 points).
More broadly, 57% of voters disapprove of the way that ICE is enforcing immigration laws, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University. But there’s a catch: That’s virtually unchanged since July 2025.
So what gives? Why have feelings toward ICE been stagnant while support for its abolition has grown?
The answer may be simple: Many Americans are self-centered.
During Trump’s first term and even into the first year of his second, ICE’s headline barbarities were primarily against immigrant families from Latin America. However, Good was not only a U.S. citizen—a fact that 70% of Americans are aware of, per the new YouGov/Economist poll—but also a young, white woman.
For Americans who could ignore ICE’s brutality against immigrants—and even for those who opposed it but felt too comfortable and safe—Good’s slaying sends a new message: If ICE could kill her, it could kill me too.
Any updates?
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In a shocking turn of events, Trump promoted the not-so-bad idea of capping interest rates for credit cards, even if his plan is half-baked. So it’s no surprise that Americans are on board: 64% support capping the rates at 10%, and 13% oppose it, per YouGov.
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On social media, Trump recently posted a doctored image of a Wikipedia page calling him the “acting president of Venezuela” amid his unpopular strikes against the nation. However, the vast majority of the U.S. hopes he’s not serious: 67% of Americans tell YouGov he should not act as the South American country’s president. Undeterred by this absurd proposition, as well as eschewing their own “America first” agenda, 31% of Republicans do back him becoming Venezuela’s president.
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This year, all eyes are on Texas’ Senate race, where two talented Democrats—state Rep. James Talarico and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett—are vying for their party’s nomination, while all chaos has broken out in the GOP primary. A new poll from Emerson College/Nexstar Media finds Talarico with a 9-point lead on Crockett. In the Republican primary, scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton and incumbent Sen. John Cornyn are essentially tied (27% vs. 26%, respectively), with Rep. Wesley Hunt trailing at 16%. Who wins the Republican primary will have outsized importance in this election since the poll shows Hunt and Cornyn each lead either Democrat in a general-election matchup—but both Talarico and Crockett are tied with Paxton.
Vibe check
In lieu of our usual Vibe Check this week, here is a note from Daily Kos reporter Alex Samuels, the co-creator and -writer of this column:
Right before the new year, YouGov asked Americans a simple question: Looking back on 2025, how do you feel about what you accomplished?
The answers were quietly reassuring. Eighteen percent said they accomplished more than they’d expected, while another 44% said they’d done about as much as they thought they would. Taken together, a clear majority (62%) ended the year without regret—or at least without notable disappointment.
I found myself somewhere between those two camps.
For me, one of the defining experiences of 2025 was starting a new(ish) job at Daily Kos. I technically joined in December 2024, though it already feels much longer than that. In the span of a year, I got to work alongside an incredible team of writers and editors, cover my home state of Texas for a national audience, and co-launch this column, Survey Says, which started as an experiment and quickly became something I was excited to write every other week.
Covering politics for readers who care about the data and the stakes has been a rare privilege—and so has getting to know this community. That’s why this note is a bittersweet one.
This past week was my last at Daily Kos.
Right now, I can’t say too much about my next chapter, but I hope to share more soon on my socials (Bluesky and X). What I can say is that I’ll still be covering Texas, and I hope to keep building the kind of engaged readership that makes this place so special.
Survey Says is in great hands as Andrew takes over full-time, and I’m genuinely looking forward to reading it from the other side.
That said, I doubt I’ll disappear from here entirely. I’ll likely be back, quietly reading along and rooting for my friends/former colleagues.
Thank you for reading and for trusting me with your time. Here’s hoping that when we all look back on 2026, even more of us can say we did about as much as—or a little more than—we expected.
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