Time is running out for the Republican Party to convince African American voters to continue to back the GOP without President Donald Trump on the ballot for the November midterm elections.
Trump won a larger percentage of African American voters, who historically make up the backbone of the Democratic Party, in the 2024 election — 15% — than any other modern Republican president, according to the Pew Research Center.
Yet two years later, the GOP is struggling to maintain those inroads as African American voters voice their dissatisfaction with the economy, gas prices, voting rights, and cost of living in their communities.
Republicans still maintain that African American voters will give their party another opportunity at keeping control of both chambers of Congress, claiming that the Democratic Party’s embrace of socialist candidates will turn them off.
“President Trump has done more to bring African Americans over than any other president in past 60 years,” Vernon Jones, a former county executive and state legislator from Georgia, told the Washington Examiner at the recent midterm convention. “Why? Because he identifies with them. He identifies those who are looking for job and job opportunities, quality education. They don’t want their kids in failing schools. They want their kids in performing schools. They don’t want crime-ridden neighborhoods.”
Quenton Jordan, senior adviser of the Black Conservative Federation, pointed to the reduction in violent crime rates and drug usage as a key indication that Trump is delivering on issues that are important to African American voters.
“That hits home for a lot of people, especially black voters, and these are some of the people who you may not necessarily hear from,” Jordan said. “It goes back to what [Trump] always used to speak about with the silent majority. I think this is sort of that silent minority voters that will start to see come out in the midterms.”
The administration is also continuing to take steps to deliver for a demographic that helped propel Trump in several swings states in 2024.
On Tuesday, the Department of Education also announced a one-time investment of over $174 million in additional funding to strengthen the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, another indication of the Trump administration’s efforts to boost the African American community.
Supporters also say multiple black candidates running for executive offices point to the growth of black voters within the Republican Party.
Jordan also pointed to high-profile African American leaders seeking statewide office, including Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who is running in the Florida gubernatorial race and Rep. John James (R-MI), who is running in Michigan’s gubernatorial election as another boost to the GOP.
“Even for like state house races or even at our federal level, you have a lot more black Republicans, black conservatives who are running for office who will bring out black voters,” Jordan said. “And I think that’s part of the story that also needs to be told because again, Trump isn’t on the ballot.
That said, all four black Republicans in the House are departing Congress next year — including Donalds and James — and just one of the 27 candidates backed by the National Republican Congressional Committee is black.
Another black candidate, who was endorsed by Trump, lost a primary to a candidate who had previously suspended his campaign in a Michigan battleground seat.
Moreover, key African American leaders pointed to statistics as to why the GOP is not guaranteed to win their votes.
“As far as the black community is concerned, those who may have voted for him, I think, may have been swayed by the economic message,” said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League. “But the black unemployment rate is higher, the inflation rate is higher, the black homeownership rate is down. The report card for him with black people is not good at all.”
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the black unemployment rate reached 7.6% in the first quarter of 2026, which was 1.2 percentage points higher than in the first three months of Trump’s second administration.
The Department of Government Efficiency’s slashing of federal workers had a disparate impact on the African American community, particularly on African American women, the Brookings Institution noted.
“And then there’s been the attacks on civil rights, the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion, the executive orders, the gutting of agencies like the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, the Department of Education, the EEOC-all of these agencies have been gutted,” Morial also said. “So, for black voters who may have thought he was going to focus on and make their economic standing better. It has not occurred.”
Democrats are hoping to win back disaffected African American voters as they try to recapture the House and Senate. During the 2025 elections, Democrats were able to prevail by running on an affordability message they are counting on to help with black voters once again.
“Black Americans have been betrayed by Donald Trump and Republicans’ harmful agenda, which continues to skyrocket costs for just about everything, take away healthcare access, and suppress the rights of voters of color,” said the Democratic National Committee’s National Political Director Shelby Wiltz. “The DNC is using every tool at our disposal to listen to Black Americans’ concerns, mobilize and turn out voters, and deliver for Black communities by lowering costs, defending their fundamental freedoms, and making life more affordable.”
The DNC’s Local Listeners program, which conducted 10,000 conversations with voters who cast a ballot in 2020 but sat out the 2024 election, showed that 75% of black voters said the country is on the wrong track. Of the 75% of black voters, 83% said they have a plan to vote in the midterm elections after sitting out in 2024. The DNC also launched the When We Count program, its largest-ever investment in partisan voter registration. The effort has helped boost black voter registration in target districts across key battleground states, with a focus on more than 200,000 unregistered black eligible voters in Arizona and Nevada.
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A recent New York Times/Siena University generic ballot poll showed 83% of black voters said they would vote for the Democratic candidate for House compared to the 11% who said they would vote for the Republican candidate. In a Senate race, 78% of black voters would support the Democratic candidate and 14% opted for the Republican candidate.
But Conservative Gen Z influencer CJ Pearson told the Washington Examiner that “President Trump still enjoys the trust and the faith of the black community, and it’s for good reason.”
“I think the challenge with any midterm, right, is getting that same coalition of people to show up again in 2026, and because the reality of it is, is that Donald Trump is not on the ballot,” he said. “Now we want people to vote like he’s on the ballot, but I think that what’s important is that I think that black voters don’t forget what life was like under the Democrats.”
Pearson suggested the GOP explain to African American voters how Trump’s second term has benefited them.
“This is not an election cycle where we get to rest on our laurels and just kind of go by on autopilot,” he said. “We’ve got to go places we typically don’t go. We’ve got to go to church pews. We’ve got to go to barber shops. We’ve got to go to black communities that may have never even met a Republican before, and that’s something that President Trump did very, very effectively in 2024.”