NEW YORK CITY - Former president and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump has made advances with the Latino and Black electorate, but he is still somewhat or very unfavorable among many of them, a new poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows.
The poll was conducted between June 7-10 and it gathered 1,115 responses, and then again on June 20-24, getting 1,088 responses. The poll shows that while the former president has seen a slight increase in favorability compared to when he left office in 2021, opinions of him from several Blacks and Latinos remain negative.
According to the study, about 4 in 10 of Hispanic Americans have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Trump (up from 3 in 10 in months prior), with that number go up to 7 in 10 among Black Americans. Looking at the overall population, about 4 in 10 Americans have a favorable opinion of the former president.
The presumptive nominee's team has said he tends to vastly appeal to Hispanic men and younger Hispanic adults because of his business focus. But, according to the AP poll, views of Trump are similar among Hispanic men and women, older and younger Hispanic adults, and those with and without a college degree.
These figures remained overall stable after Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in New York for his hush money trial, the Associated Press explains. Growing literature also supports this point. A Gallup poll found that Trump's average job approval rating was 41% and it never exceeded 50%.
The Republican campaign initially thought the historic conviction would be a major point of appeal with Black Americans, since the group has historically faced discrimination in the criminal justice system, something Trump and his followers have continuously said he also experienced, according to The Associated Press.
But instead, numbers have remained steady. About 7 in 10 Black adults have an unfavorable view of Trump, a decrease of about 20 percentage points since early 2021. Younger Black Americans, however, may be more open to him, as about one third of Black younger adults— those under 45— see him positively, compared to around 1 in 10 Black adults 45 or older who do the same.
The figures, however, are published in a context where both presidential candidates are rather unpopular, and many voters are set to pick what for them is the lesser of two evils. That's why Trump could secure the biggest share of Latino votes than any other Republican presidential candidate in history (including himself).
During the current election cycle, Trump has seen an improvement in polling among Latino voters. An often cited A New York Times/Siena College poll found that Biden had only a 1% lead over Trump among this demographic, with 47% and 46% respectively.
As Newsweek reports, if those numbers were to be similar come election day, Trump would surpass Richard Nixon's as the Republican with the biggest share of Latino votes in history. Nixon received 40 percent of the Latino vote in 1972, just 7 years after the 1965 Voting Rights Act granted suffrage rights to Hispanic voters and other ethnic minorities.
The report comes as Latinos and Black Americans are expected to play a decisive role in deciding who the next president of the U.S. will be. This has led both major parties to invest millions of dollars in advertising campaigns to specifically target both of these groups.
These numbers are also revealed days before Donald Trump is expected to formally accept his party's nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for the third time.
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