Trump's 2024 Gains With Hispanic, Black and Young Voters Erode Before Midterms

The voting blocs that delivered Donald Trump's 2024 victory are drifting away from him and his party, according to recent polling, as rising living costs, an ongoing conflict with Iran, a trade dispute with Canada and a hardline immigration crackdown weigh on his standing. That erosion threatens Republican prospects in the midterm elections.

Geoffrey Skelley, chief elections analyst at Decision Desk HQ, said the shift is clear. "There's no question that that Republicans and President Trump are not polling nearly as well among, say, Hispanics or younger people" compared with 2024, he said, adding that the economy is the primary factor. Voters no longer see Trump as a capable manager of the economy, Skelley said, and Republicans will likely pay a price for that perception.

Hispanic voters, who account for about 16 percent of the national electorate, backed Joe Biden by 25 points in 2020. That advantage shrank to 3 points for Kamala Harris in 2024, according to Pew Research Center analysis. Trump made significant gains with both Hispanic men and women. He carried Hispanic men by 2 points in 2024, after Biden had won them by 18 points four years earlier. Harris won Hispanic women by 6 points, a steep decline from Biden's 32-point margin.

Analysts from both parties attributed that rightward shift to Trump's promises to ease financial pressures. Now, multiple recent surveys suggest Hispanic voters are looking elsewhere. A Cook Political Report/Televisa Univision poll found that 18 percent of Hispanic voters who backed Trump in 2024 disapprove of his job performance. In Decision Desk HQ's latest polling averages, Hispanic voters prefer Democrats for Congress by 20 points on a generic ballot, up from about 10 points at the start of last year.

That movement could prove decisive in Texas and Florida, the red states with the largest Hispanic populations, where Republicans used the 2024 results to redraw congressional maps in their favor. Alongside economic concerns, the administration's immigration enforcement has damaged the GOP's standing with Hispanic voters.

"The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today," Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) said in a recent campaign message, arguing that Trump had gone "too far" with immigration enforcement. Spencer Kimball, director of Emerson College Polling, said the deportation policy appeared to disproportionately affect the Hispanic community early on, which immediately began dragging down Trump's numbers and has now pushed that vote toward Democrats by a two-to-one margin.

Trump also improved his share among Black voters in 2024, though the group remains heavily Democratic. He won 8 percent of Black voters in 2020, and that support nearly doubled to 15 percent when he won a second term. The gain was driven mostly by Black men, who swung 21 points toward the GOP between 2020 and 2024, according to Pew. Black women moved toward Trump by only 11 points over the same period.

In Decision Desk HQ averages, African Americans' disapproval of the president was in the high sixties this summer and has since risen to 75 percent. Skelley noted that this group was already overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning and therefore unlikely to approve of Trump, but that the situation has worsened. He said the key question for Black voters this election will be in southern states where redistricting occurred, and whether there will be a backlash.

Young voters, whose support for Democrats narrowed from Biden's 25-point advantage to a 4-point edge for Harris in 2024, also give Trump low marks. A Yale Youth Poll conducted in March found that 27 percent of voters aged 18 to 22 approved of Trump's job performance, while 68 percent disapproved. Among those aged 23 to 29, Trump's approval stood at 27 percent, with 72 percent disapproving.

A Cygnal poll released last month, commissioned by The Lafayette Company, found that 55 percent of young men aged 18 to 30 held an unfavorable view of the president, and 49 percent felt the same about the Republican Party. Alex Tarascio, a principal and pollster at Cygnal, said cost of living, job security and money largely drive that sentiment. In the poll, 21 percent of young men named earning enough to cover costs as the most important issue, followed by 17 percent citing mental health and 14 percent physical health. When asked which issue would most influence their vote, 29 percent chose inflation and cost of living, 14 percent housing affordability and nearly 10 percent immigration.

"So much of this age group is about milestones that you achieve," Tarascio said. "It's not necessarily about if you've made it to the mountaintop, but if you are on the way, if you're on that pathway. And if you have a job that puts you on a career track, those men are doing much better." Jack Dozier, director of the Yale Youth Poll, attributed the shift to "unmet promises," saying that since 2024 there has been "a detraction from that clear-cut economic agenda," pointing to the White House ballroom construction and the administration's involvement in foreign conflicts.

Trump has also lost ground among groups that were once reliably in his corner. In Decision Desk HQ averages, he is now more than 14 points underwater among white voters, after remaining above water for most of last year. He has also slipped broadly among his own 2024 supporters. Tarascio said his polling shows Trump holds a 73 percent favorability rating among self-identified 2024 Trump voters, while 88 percent of 2024 Harris voters view him unfavorably.

The numbers offer Democrats hope in the battle for control of Capitol Hill, but the central question is whether voters expressing frustration with Trump in surveys will actually turn out for Democrats in November. Skelley said Democrats are the default alternative, but partisanship remains strong, and many Republican-leaning voters will likely stick with their party. However, if there is enough erosion among Republican-leaning voters who do turn out, combined with strong turnout from Democrats angry at the status quo, that could matter at the margins.

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