Ohioans know Trump’s claims about immigrants are false — but they still plan to vote for him

Most voters in Ohio do not believe Donald Trump’s racist falsehood that Haitian immigrants are “eating the pets” of Springfield.

But the Republican presidential candidate is still leading Vice President Kamala Harris by roughly six percentage points in the state, maintaining his lead from his 2016 and 2020 victories, according to polling from The Washington Post.

Roughly 55 percent of Ohio voters, including nearly every Democratic voter in the survey, correctly believe that the debunked viral claim that Haitian immigrants in the state are eating people’s cats and dogs is false.

But 42 percent of Ohio Republicans believe Trump, the poll found. Taken together with the respondents who say they’re “not sure,” that figure is 68 percent.

Law enforcement and city officials in Springfield have firmly rejected the allegation — which was amplified by Trump on the debate stage and by his running mate JD Vance and their allies, dovetailing with Republican campaign promises and inflated claims on immigration and the US-Mexico border.

The claims appeared to fuel death threats as well as hoax bomb threats that temporarily closed schools and city buildings and forced hospitals into lockdown.

Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican who supports Trump, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times defending the city’s “rich history of providing refuge for the oppressed and being a place of opportunity.”

Haitian immigrants, who are living there legally, have been an economic boon to the city amid a population decline and a depressed business outlook as the city’s labor force dried up, DeWine said.

“As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield,” DeWine wrote. “This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.”

Trump won the state by roughly eight percentage points in 2016 and 2020 after Democratic candidate Barack Obama carried the state in 2008 and 2012.

Ninety percent of Republican voters in the state plan to vote for Trump in 2024, while 95 percent of Democrats plan to support Harris, according to the poll.

The Washington Post poll also found that the race for Ohio Senate is in a dead heat, with incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown at 48 percent and his Republican rival Bernie Moreno at 47 percent — within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.