Minority voters will ‘increasingly choose who they think will do the best job for them irrespective of old loyalties,’ says pollster
A newly released poll reveals that support for former president Donald Trump has been growing among minority voters.
Minorities may now see Trump as better equipped to handle economic challenges, security and international affairs than the current administration, U.K. pollster, author and businessman Lord Michael Ashcroft told the National Post in a statement over email.
Minority voters will “increasingly choose who they think will do the best job for them irrespective of old loyalties,” said Ashcroft, who conducted the poll, completed prior to an assassination attempt on Trump over the weekend.
Three surveys — one taken before Trump’s conviction, one after, and another after the presidential debate — found that Trump was ahead of President Joe Biden among Hispanic registered voters, according to the poll.
When asked about why voters believed Trump was polling better than most Republicans among minorities, Americans responded that those communities were looking “more to the policies and candidates that seemed best suited to their own circumstances, especially on the economy,” the poll found.
They also said that “if most presidents were older white men, some of which may have harboured racist views in private, people might as well choose the one who seemed likely to do the best job for them.”
Among other reasons why Trump appealed to minorities, Americans listed stimulus cheques, celebrity endorsements, “machismo” and a firm stance on illegal migration.
The poll, which came out ahead of this week’s Republican National Convention, asked Americans whether or not the U.S. was headed in the right direction and if they were better off now than they were four years ago. The poll also focused on how opinions shifted after the Biden-Trump presidential debate on June 27, as well as after Trump’s conviction. (The former president was found guilty of 34 counts of falsification of business records in May.)
“In many cases, the Trump presidency is looking a lot better in retrospect. And it’s important to remember that this was before the assassination attempt (on Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13),” said Ashcroft.
“We don’t yet know how that will play out, but it would be surprising if it didn’t consolidate or even extend Trump’s support.”
For the poll, a total of 20,210 adults were interviewed online in the United States between May 17 and July 7, 2024. Roughly half of those interviews were done before Trump’s felony conviction on May 30, while 5,169 interviews took place after. A further 5,016 interviews were done after the Biden-Trump debate.
For many voters, the debate called into question Biden’s mental fitness and ability to serve another term as president. Many Democrats, and even celebrities, called for the 81-year-old president to step down.
Overall, 63 per cent of Americans agreed with the statement that the United States was “headed in the wrong direction.” The majority of Americans who voted for Trump in 2020 agreed with the statement, at 85 per cent, while less than half of the 2020 Biden voters agreed, at 44 per cent.
A similar trend continued when Americans were asked whether they thought they were better off at the time they were polled than they were four years ago. Most voters felt “worse off” at 44 per cent, with 30 per cent feeling “about the same” and 24 per cent feeling “better off.”
However, those who voted for Trump in 2020 were overwhelmingly disappointed. Sixty per cent of them felt worse off, compared to 31 per cent of those who voted for Biden in 2020.
The poll also showed that there was a shift in public opinion about Biden after the debate. Overall, the percentage of voters who strongly disapproved of the way he was handling his job increased from 37 per cent to 41 per cent. Almost half of all voters (46 per cent) thought that Biden’s physical and mental capacity were more important than Trump’s character and judgment (43 per cent) in this year’s presidential election. (The remaining voters, roughly 12 per cent, were not sure.)
Meanwhile, Trump’s conviction didn’t seem to upset voters too much. Before Trump was found guilty on May 30, a quarter of voters said they thought the legal proceedings would make him more likely to win the election. After, the percentage increased to 29 per cent.
“Participants were drawn from a wide range of social, economic and political backgrounds and the groups comprised equal numbers of men and women overall,” according to the poll’s methodology.
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