'Surprised': Ex-Trump aide claims exit polls show he blew greatest issue on campaign trail

Former Trump administration communications aide Alyssa Farah Griffin thinks the exit polls in the 2024 election show a startling reality: Republicans blew one of their greatest issues on the campaign trail, which was immigration.

Voters ranked immigration far lower in the exit poll than they have in polling for most of the cycle, Griffin noted on a CNN panel Tuesday evening as survey data started to come in — and she thinks that may be because Vice President Kamala Harris' messaging against former President Donald Trump, and particularly reminding them that Trump worked behind the scenes to sabotage a bipartisan border security bill, managed to beat the issue to a near tie with voters.

"I'm ... surprised immigration has gone down in its significance of top issues, which was one and two for most of this race," said Griffin. "And I have to wonder whether that's because Donald Trump led on it for so long, but I think Kamala Harris was able to negate some of that steam, by saying that she would have signed the border bill."

"That may have resonated with voters," she continued. "That there are two candidates that care about this issue, they simply have different approaches."

This comes amid other analyses suggesting that Trump may have blown his considerable early lead with voters on the economy, which also shows as being at a near-tie in exit polls, by focusing so hard on tariffs, a policy that economists broadly agree would raise the price of goods, losing the public's trust on controlling inflation.

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