Source: Politics
Democrats have more work to do if they want to win over younger Black men ahead of the midterms, new research reveals.
Black men 50 years old and below were more likely to show apathy toward President Donald Trump’s policies and less likely to say they were personally hurt by them, compared with other age and gender groups within the critical voting bloc, according to a survey released Thursday by several Democratic-aligned organizations.
Forty-two percent of Black men under 50 said Trump’s policies have not made much of a difference. Just 24 percent of Black men over 50 said the same, as did 22 percent Black women over 50 and 30 percent of Black women under 50.
Across the board, 63 percent of Black voters said Democrats in Congress are responsible for fighting against government actions that harm their communities, but only 36 percent said they believed congressional Democrats were very actively fighting.
Democrats have seen recent electoral success slamming Trump on the economy as voters increasingly blame his administration for rising costs. But the party is still working to piece back together a strong multiracial coalition after the president fractured it in 2024, when he won roughly a quarter of Black men and nearly half of all Latino men.
“This has been one of my loudest warnings to the left after the 2025 elections,” said Terrance Woodbury, the founding partner of the liberal-leaning polling firm HIT Strategies, which conducted the research project. “[Do] not wave a ‘mission accomplished’ flag, do not to assume that we have reassembled our coalition of young people and people of color and men of color — who I believe have become the new swing voters.”
Trump’s approval rating overall has fallen, and a recent YouGov poll showed it at just 8 percent among Black voters. Since returning to office, the president has also moved to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, while ratcheting up criminal penalties and tougher immigration enforcement.
But Harrison Fields, a GOP strategist and former White House official who served in Trump’s second term, is optimistic.
“The Democrats have not done enough to convince Black males in particular, to come back home because they haven’t been focused on policy,” he said. “If your only policy is being against Trump, you then again are proving Black voters, especially Black male voters, correct in that [the Democratic Party’s] focus is not about them.”
Thursday’s survey relied on several rounds of data collection, including three focus groups in August, a national survey of 1,000 Black registered voters with a margin of error of 3.1 percent in October, and a rapid messaging testing trial of 1,808 Black registered voters conducted from Jan. 30 to Feb. 5.