Trump hits new poll highs with Black, Hispanic voters.

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Either former president Donald Trump’s standing in early 2024 polls is inflated, or we are headed for a sizable realignment in how non-White voters cast their ballots.

Multiple polls in recent weeks have shown Trump performing historically well among Black and Hispanic voters in head-to-head matchups with President Biden, helping put him neck-and-neck with Biden in a way he rarely was during their 2020 matchup.

Across five high-quality polls that have broken out non-White voters in the past month, Trump is averaging 20 percent of Black voters and 42 percent of Hispanic voters.

Both numbers — and especially that for Black voters — could set modern-day records for a Republican in a presidential election. Trump in 2020 took just 8 percent of Black voters and 36 percent of Hispanic voters, according to the Pew Research Center’s validated voter survey. Exit polls pegged those figures at 12 percent of Black voters and 32 percent of Hispanic voters.

(The validated voter surveys involve conducting a huge poll of American adults and then getting a more accurate picture than the exit polls by verifying whether respondents actually voted, using official records.)

No Republican presidential candidate in the past 50 years has approached receiving 20 percent of the Black vote. Since Republicans took 18 percent in 1972 and 16 percent in 1976, according to exit polls, they haven’t taken more than 12 percent of Black voters. Their average share over the past 50 years is 9 percent — about half of where Trump currently sits in the polls.

Hispanic voters have trended toward the GOP in recent elections, but the party’s current high-water marks over the past half-century are 37 percent in 1984 and a disputed 44 percent in 2004. (Other estimates placed President George W. Bush’s actual share of the Hispanic vote that year at about 40 percent, which would be shy of where Trump currently is in the polls.)

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