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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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President Donald Trump said that Black and Brown voters are "flocking" to the Republican Party, but recent polling contradicts his claims, showing that his approval rating among these groups has plummeted.
Trump made the claim on Sunday on his social media platform, Truth Social, writing: "Black and Brown Voters don’t want Communism or Socialism—Not surprisingly, they are flocking to the Republican Party! They remember that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican!"
The underlying message is one that the president has tried to convey many times before: the Democratic Party, led by progressives like New York City’s Zohran Mamdani, has moved so far to the left that it is alienating American voters.
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But recent polls show that voters, instead of "flocking" to the GOP, are actually turning their back on the president and his administration amid rising inflation following the start of the Iran war—including Black and Hispanic voters.
While Trump’s approval has fallen among Americans overall, the decline has been particularly severe among Black voters. His net approval rating among Black respondents is more than six times worse than his overall national rating, according to the latest Economist/YouGov survey.
In response to a request for comment by Newsweek, White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster said: "President Trump has done more for Black Americans than any other President in recent history. During the President’s first term, he implemented policies that resulted in record-low unemployment for Black Americans, established opportunity zones, and provided long-term funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
"The second Trump administration is building on those tremendous successes by making our communities safe and beautiful, stopping the flow of illegal migrants who were undermining American workers, signing the largest working-class tax cut in American history, and putting American children on a path toward generational wealth through Trump Accounts."
Black and Hispanic Voters Increasingly Disapprove of Trump’s Handling of His Job
"The idea that Black voters are—or have been—moving toward Trump and the GOP comes about every election cycle, but is not backed by any reliable data," Christopher Towler, an assistant professor of political science at Sacramento State University and principal investigator at voting rights organization Black Voter Project, told Newsweek.
"Going back to the 1970s, Black voters have overwhelmingly supported Democrats, and only a small number—anywhere from 12 to 20 percent—vote for the GOP candidate. 2024 was no exception," Towler said.
"This idea, though, is often put up against the extremely small support—less than 10 percent—the GOP received during the Obama years as evidence that Black voters are moving toward the GOP; however, what we’ve seen the last few election cycles represents a return to the historical mean more than any real racial realignment."
That said, Towler added, "if there is any movement when it comes to Black voters that may suggest a long-term trend, it is away from the Democratic Party to a more Independent or non-partisan leaning. This is especially the case among younger Black voters who are less historically tied to the Democratic Party’s historical Civil Rights gains, and feel as if Democrats tend to take Black voters’ continuing support for granted."
While a majority voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, Black and Hispanic voters did shift right, particularly men and young people.
A majority of 51 percent of Hispanic voters supported Harris in 2024, according to Cornell University data, against 46 percent who backed Trump; that was up from 65 percent who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and 32 percent who supported Trump then.
Trump also nearly doubled his support among Black voters between 2020 and 2024, according to Pew Research data. While 8 percent voted for him in 2020, 15 percent did so in 2024. Even so, an overwhelming majority (83 percent) voted Democratic.
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But whatever advancements Trump had made with these groups have started to unravel in recent months, as the president’s approval rating fell amid all voters over concerns for the U.S. economy.
Trump’s net approval rating among Black voters has dropped by 25 points since May, according to polls by The Economist/YouGov.
The most recent poll, conducted between August 7 and 10 among 1,589 U.S. adults, found that just 13 percent of Black respondents approve of the president’s handling of his job, against 79 percent who disapprove of it.
That gives the president a net approval rating of -66 with Black voters, the lowest since his return to the White House.
By comparison, 22 percent of Black voters said they approved of Trump’s job performance, while 69 percent disapproved, giving him a net approval rating of -47. Since then, Trump’s net approval among Black voters has steadily declined. In polls conducted in June and July, it was -54 and -64 respectively.
Approval rates among Hispanic voters have similarly declined. In the latest poll, only 27 percent of Hispanic respondents approved of Trump’s handling of his job as president, while 66 percent disapproved, for a net approval of -39.
Overall, Trump’s net approval rating among all Americans in the latest The Economist/YouGov poll was -10.
Black Voters Aren’t Happy About the Economy—and Data Backs Them Up
Significantly, the latest The Economist/YouGov poll shows that only 16 percent of Black voters think the American economy is currently in an "excellent" or "good" state, while 81 percent say it is doing fairly or poorly.
Similarly, 17 percent of Hispanic voters think the economy is doing positively, while 78 percent believe it is doing poorly. Overall, 22 percent of Americans think the economy is doing well and 75 percent believe the opposite.
For Black voters, their unhappiness about the state of the U.S. economy reflects the fact that they are now in the worst financial position they have been in a decade, according to a recent analysis of Federal Reserve data published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
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After a year of what researchers call the "Trump economy," economic instability among Black households has gotten worse, with the latest Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED) showing an increase in the number of Black adults worried about finding or keeping a job, and a decrease in those saying they are doing OK or living comfortably in 2025.
"The latest SHED survey […] shows that the harm caused by the administration’s economic chaos has not affected all people equally," EPI researchers wrote.
"Structural inequities embedded in the U.S. economy and labor market have historically left communities of color disproportionately vulnerable to economic insecurity and poverty, and the Federal Reserve’s survey shows that this trend is continuing," they added.
"While the overall financial well-being of most adults held steady in 2025, the financial well-being of Black adults declined."
"All of the research I’ve done in the last couple of years suggests that economic concerns are at the front of Black voters’ minds, just like most other people across the country. However, Black voters’ economic concerns are grounded in their racial identity, and the perception that the Black community faces disproportionate economic problems, especially when it comes to things like unemployment and poverty," Towler said.
"Their economic evaluations are different from those of white voters, and they often see the economic problems they’re facing as more extreme and prevalent," he added.
"Therefore, the economic downturn of the last two years has greatly influenced Black voters, who already had overwhelmingly negative views of Trump, making them express even more antipathy toward the president, his administration, and the MAGA voters who support him."
In 2025, the share of Black adults "doing OK" or "living comfortably" declined by almost five percentage points last year to 60 percent—the lowest figure SHED has recorded since 2015. By comparison, 68 percent of Black adults thought they were doing financially well.
Black adults were also more likely to experience layoffs, with the share of workers let go rising from 10 percent in 2024 to 12.7 percent in 2025. Similarly, layoffs increased sharply among Hispanic adults as well (from 8.2 percent to 9.6 percent), while among White voters they went up to 5.4 percent from 4.7 percent.
Federal labor market data have also shown Black workers continue to face higher unemployment rates than White workers, a long-standing disparity that economists say leaves Black households more exposed to economic downturns.
Possibly because they faced such a significant increase in layoffs, Black adults were much more likely to be concerned about finding a job or keeping one (from 46.4 percent in 2024 to 55.1 percent in 2025) than Hispanic adults (from 46.9 percent to 54.9 percent) and white adults (from 30.3 percent to 32.5 percent).
Their growing employment vulnerability, combined with the impact of the ongoing affordability crisis, is making Black households more worried about how to get through the end of the month. According to EPI, the share of Black adults reporting that making ends meet was at least a minor concern for them and their families surged by about eight percentage points between 2024 and 2025.
In contrast, the share of white, non-Hispanic adults who reported similar concerns declined marginally during the same period.
What Does This Mean for Trump and the GOP?
The recent polling and plunge in approval rating for the president do not necessarily erase the gains Trump made among Black and Hispanic voters in the 2024 presidential election.
But they suggest that those gains may be under pressure as economic concerns mount, threatening the Republican Party as it approaches the upcoming midterms—and potentially, the 2028 election.
According to Towler, if this current trend continues, it will be very difficult for the GOP to make any real gains with Black voters for the foreseeable future.
"I don’t see this as a political shift because Black voters have never really expressed support for Trump or the MAGA GOP, and it is going to take years of work to undo much of the damage that the current Republican Party has done to Black perceptions of the GOP by embracing a candidate—and political movement, for that matter—that has openly expressed what many view as racist and anti-black attitudes and policy stances," Towler said.
"If anything, the combination of Trump’s attacks on the Black community and the economic downturn that disproportionately affects Black people is creating a situation where Black voters may choose to turnout in reaction to Trump," Towler said, "voting at rates that can decide close elections in swing districts and states with significant Black populations, such as in places like Michigan, South Carolina, and Georgia."
Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Ben Kelly and Robert Greenall
Update, 08/14/2026 5:37 a.m. ET: this article has been updated with comments from Christopher Towler.
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