Tariffs. United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. National Guard deployments. The Epstein files. Strikes on Iran. Gaza and Ukraine. Sticky inflation. The first year of President Donald Trump’s time in office has been a firehose of unpopular policies, confrontational tactics, and frequent clashes with his perceived enemies.
Each of these developments has tended to trigger the same question: Will any of this matter to the voters who made up his winning coalition in 2024? Will he bleed support, fracture his coalition, and doom future Republicans? Or was 2024 a more durable realignment in American politics?
The answer isn’t as clear-cut as headlines often make it out to be. There has been some slippage in support among Trump’s 2024 voting coalition, but it’s not the GOP doomsday scenario some headlines have tended to make it out to be (for example, saying that the coalition has “fallen apart”).
Similar cases were made after Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs, after American strikes on Iran, after the Epstein files took over headlines, and as Trump began to enforce his immigration policies and carry out deportations. Yet, through it all, this summer and entering fall, his popularity and approval ratings have remained steady — negative, historically low, but still not a complete collapse.
So, what can we tell about the state of Trump’s 2024 coalition? At least three things:
- He’s losing the most support among groups he made the biggest gains with in 2024, specifically with Hispanic/Latino Americans and young people.
- An overwhelming majority of Republicans and conservatives still like what they see from Trump.
- Perceptions of the economy, far and away, are still the biggest risk to this shaky alliance. And there are no clear signs that moods are shifting in Trump’s direction.
Level setting: Trump’s coalition is still primarily behind him
It’s important to be clear about what we mean when we talk about Trump’s coalition. It includes the loyal MAGA base: primarily white, rural, and non-college educated. And it includes a broad swath of new voters that gave him the margins to narrowly win the popular vote and battleground states: young and nonwhite voters, specifically young men, and former Democrats who were disgruntled with the establishment and status quo. These newer Trump voters weren’t hardcore conservatives or loyal Republicans, but they were disengaged, dissatisfied, and desired change.
Almost a year later, the majority of this coalition still stands by Trump. The latest New York Times/Siena College poll, one of the most useful tools we have available, finds little change in how people feel about the president today when compared to four months ago. From April to September, Trump’s share of support has held steady at about 42 to 43 percent.
In other words, some 40 percent of the country approves of Trump’s presidency through every controversy and pronouncement, while a slight majority continuously disapproves.