Trump slipping with Black voters after 2024 gains

President Trump is seeing signs that his approval is slipping with Black voters after notable gains with the demographic in last year’s election.

Recent polling suggests African American voters, already more disapproving of Trump than other demographic groups, have been souring on the president. Decision Desk HQ aggregates find more than70 percent disapprove of his job performance, while around a quarter approve, putting him in one of the weakest positions with the group since returning to the White House.

Although Black voters overwhelmingly backed former Vice President Kamala Harris in November, Trump made significant inroads for a Republican, winning about 15 percent, according to a Pew Research Center study released last month — double the percentage he took in 2020. Republicans touted the development as a sign of their expanding coalition, but the latest numbers could signal risks for Trump and the GOP heading into the midterms and beyond.

“We’ve seen his overall approval rating go down. And that’s got to come from somewhere. The African American vote is his newest vote, and that’s probably going to be the first to go,” said Scott Tranter, the director of data science for DDHQ.

Trump’s overall approval rating sits underwater at a net score of negative 7 points, according to the latest averages, after enjoying above-water scores in the weeks after taking office. He hit a disapproval high in April, recovered slightly in May and early June, then dipped in July.

Among African Americans, Trump’s at a net rating of roughly negative 47 points in the DDHQ aggregate. Since mid-June, his disapproval has climbed from around 63 percent to roughly 72 percent — up nearly 20 points from his first couple of weeks back in office.

Although losing some ground is to be expected, given Trump’s overall score, “the African American movement, it’s measurable, it’s significant,” Tranter said. “He’s about the same in where he is with Hispanics as he was on Inauguration Day, but it’s very clear he’s lost with African Americans.”

Trump’s November gains didn’t occur in a vacuum or all at once. While the overwhelming majority of Black voters identify as Democrats or Democratic-leaning, the party’s decades-long advantage has weakened somewhat based on polling and some election results.

Republicans attributed the improvements to a feeling among some Black voters that Democrats took their support for granted without specifically addressing their needs.

“President Trump’s historic performance with Black voters in November marks a significant shift in our community, showing that more people are willing to look beyond party labels and focus on real, tangible solutions,” said Janiyah Thomas, who served as Black media director for Trump’s 2024 campaign.

She said these voters appreciated his focus on economic growth and criminal justice reform during his first term.

Trump signed bipartisan legislation in 2018 called the First Step Act to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes.

Thomas argued “false media narratives” overshadow Trump’s achievements, and all Americans want “real results: safer communities, better jobs, and opportunities to build a better future,” she said.

Republican strategist Melik Abdul said an uptick in Black support for Republican candidates has happened since at least 2018, suggesting the change is less about Trump and more about the party.

“We focus so much of our attention at the national level that we ignore what’s happening on the state level,” he said, pointing to the inroads that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) made with Black voters in their 2022 reelection campaigns.

But he argued Trump and the party have “misread” what they should learn from the increase and wrongly presume that the new voters they gained will stay. He attributed the shift in 2024 to dissatisfaction with the Biden administration, warning the votes for Trump aren’t “static” going into the midterms next year.

Abdul said he doesn’t read as much into any single approval rating poll because they are often in response to the news of the day, but he isn’t surprised to see a drop in support given some developments in his second term, like the Department of Government Efficiency’s cuts and concerns about Medicaid cuts as a result of the Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill, which he signed into law Friday.

“You hear the concerns that people have around Medicaid, whether it personally will impact them or not,” he said. “They hear it, and when you hear stories of people potentially losing Medicaid, obviously that’s something that will impact poll numbers.”

New polling from YouGov/The Economist, taken over the weekend, found 15 percent of Black voters approve of Trump, compared to 20 percent in an early June survey and 28 percent in early February.

YouGov’s tracker, last populated in mid-June, puts Trump’s disapproval among Black Americans at roughly 86 percent, hitting the high point of his first-term ratings from the group.

“There are decisions that the Trump administration is making that could be circulating in Black communities, that could be factored in,” said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University with a focus on African American politics.

She pointed to some of the administration’s controversial economic moves — which have served as a drag on his overall numbers after his 2024 messaging on the economy was seen as key to his inroads with voters of color — but also to Trump’s posture toward diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and his rhetoric on racial issues.

“You may be OK with America bombing Iran over nuclear weapons, but you may take issue with having heard that Pete Hegseth and the Defense Department pulled a lot of books about Black people off the shelves at Annapolis, or pulled down pages that honor Jackie Robinson [as] a veteran because it was deemed DEI,” Gillespie said, referencing a Pentagon-ordered review of books at the Naval Academy library and what the Defense Department said was the mistaken removal of a webpage about Robinson.

Brown University political science professor Katherine Tate, however, suggested that while Trump’s controversial moves on culture war issues appear to be strengthening Black opposition to Trump, it’s not necessarily turning off Black supporters who sided with him in 2024.

“[Black] Trump supporters are pleased with the deportations and tax cuts. I think Trump has moved these [Black voters] to the GOP,” Tate told The Hill in an email. “While not a big number, it’s more than the single digits of the 1980s. So that is a legacy for Trump: he moved some Blacks to his party.”

Trump won the White House by making “a lot of promises” and tapping into voter anger and confusion, said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright. Now, he’s “essentially giving Black America the middle finger” — but that doesn’t mean Democrats don’t have their work cut out for them to reclaim voters who turned to the GOP last year.

“We have to look down the field as Democrats,” Seawright said. “Just because they don’t like Trump doesn’t mean that they’re going to automatically wrap themselves around us.”

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