The majority of Tennesseans approve of President Donald Trump’s decision to send the National Guard to crime-ridden Memphis, a poll found. 

The Beacon Center of Tennessee released a new poll on Wednesday that found 63% of Tennessee voters approved of Trump’s announcement to deploy the National Guard to Memphis. Thirty-three percent of those surveyed said that they disapproved of Trump’s deployment decision. The majority of Republicans supported the deployment, while most Democrats opposed it. 

The Beacon Center is a non-partisan organization that provides research on free market solutions to public policy questions. 

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has sent federal law enforcement personnel to Memphis, where they have made over 1,700 arrests, including over 126 gang members. They have made arrests for individuals wanted on charges related to murder, drugs, gun charges, and sex offenses.

A judge on Monday heard arguments challenging Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s authority to send the National Guard into Memphis, which has historically had one of the worst murder rates in the country. The troops have been patrolling neighborhoods in a manner similar to their deployment in crime-plagued Washington, D.C. 

The Beacon Center of Tennessee Poll also found that a majority of Tennessee Democrats have a favorable view of socialism. The polling was conducted before Democrat socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City. 

Surveying 336 Democrat voters, 54% have a positive view, while another 31% had a negative view. Altogether, 56% of Tennessee voters had a negative view of socialism, while 32% had a favorable view. 

Beacon Center poll.

“The favorability of socialism among Democrats is notable, and it will likely influence how Democratic candidates run to the Left in contested primaries, but also could spell doom for the party in general elections if the public’s view on socialism stays the same,” said Mark Cunningham, the Beacon’s senior fellow for public opinion.

Other key findings from the poll included Senator Marsha Blackburn having a strong lead in the race to be the Republican gubernatorial nominee ahead of Rep. John Rose (R-TN) and state Rep. Monty Fritts. In a hypothetical matchup voted on by 545 Republican voters, Blackburn garnered 58% of the vote, Rose 9%, and Fritts 5%. 

The poll also found that most voters support Tennessee’s deal with tech entrepreneur Elon Musk to build a tunnel from the airport to downtown Nashville. 

In all, the poll sampled some 1,200 registered voters from October 26 to 29.

A California ballot measure that would change the state’s electoral map passed on Tuesday, paving the way for Democrats to add five congressional seats in the coming midterm elections.

With three-quarters of votes counted, Decision Desk HQ reports that around 65% of Californians voted for Proposition 50, which “authorizes temporary changes to congressional district maps in response to Texas’s partisan redistricting.” The measure, which California Governor Gavin Newsom, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other prominent Democrats supported, was slammed as overly partisan by opponents, and heavily funded by supporters. The Daily Wire reported that one of the major donors to Newsom’s ballot measure committee included Blue Shield of California, which donated $500,000.

The California Democratic Party website said that the proposal is “a direct response to a Republican power grab orchestrated by President Trump and state leaders in Texas, who redrew congressional district lines to gain five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

“If Texas had backed off, California would have backed off,” Pelosi posted on X last week. “But Trump insisted on Texas starting this fight — so California will meet this moment and win BIG on Tuesday to defend our health care and our democracy.”

The passage of Proposition 50 is a major win for Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential candidate. It comes just hours after voters across the country elected socialist Zohran Mamdani mayor of New York City and sent Democrats to the governors mansions in New Jersey and Virginia.

In October, Los Angeles County Republican Chair Roxanne Hoge explained that the phrasing of the measure made the race competitive.

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“If we didn’t have the crazy title in summary that they had, it would be like Prop 36, right. Overwhelming. But given the title and summary we have, it’s neck and neck,” she said at the time. Prop. 36 was a 2024 ballot measure that passed overwhelmingly to fight back against crime in the Golden State.

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, also opposed the proposition.

“There is such extreme gerrymandering going on that in a state like Massachusetts, it has like 40% of the people voting for Trump, they only — they have zero representatives,” Schwarzenegger said in a recent CNN interview. “The Republican Party has zero representatives sent to the House. Think about that.”

“In New Mexico, 45% of the people voted for Trump and vote Republican, and zero is sent to the House, zero representatives from the Republican Party,”  he added. “So there’s gerrymandering — crazy gerrymandering — going on all over the country, and we wanted to try to stop it in California, and we did stop it in California.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), whose seat is expected to be redrawn under Proposition 50 tells The Daily Wire that he’s “not going anywhere.”

“It was difficult to watch as Gavin Newsom and Sacramento’s special interests set about shredding the state constitution, disenfranchising millions of Californians solely because of how they vote, and delivering what they know is an undeserved advantage to Democrats,” Issa said. “But here’s something Newsom and his cronies don’t know: It won’t work.”

“Voters get to pick their representatives. Not the other way around,” the congressman continued, later adding that he’s “not quitting on California. And neither should anyone else.”