The Republican Party is bracing for a brutal midterm election this year. Polls show Democrats ahead in the generic congressional ballot, and prediction markets give them solid odds of taking the House and a modest chance of flipping the Senate. But despite polls and prediction markets, there are signs that the GOP could defy history.
And it comes down to black voters.
Could black voters actually be the secret weapon that keeps Republicans in power after the 2026 midterms? The numbers, at least according to CNN’s Harry Enten, suggest the question is worth asking seriously.
Enten laid out a striking case, walking through data that shows Donald Trump and the GOP making inroads with African American voters that the Republican Party simply hasn’t seen in decades.
While there’s no doubt that Democrats still have a solid advantage among black voters, that advantage is shrinking, and in tight races, even modest shifts can flip outcomes.
Trump’s approval rating among black voters sat at 12% during his first term. It’s now at 16%. It’s a modest shift that could be consequential, Enten argues, in states like Georgia, where margins are razor-thin, and every percentage point is a battleground. “Republicans absolutely love the shift that’s going on,” Enten said, “because Democrats have had such a long-term advantage.” He argued that Trump “actually gaining ground versus where he was in term number one… has major implications for elections down the line.”
The party identification numbers are another good sign for the GOP in November. Democrats have a 51-point advantage with African-American voters, which may sound good, but it’s actually a devastating number when you consider that during Trump’s first term, Democrats held a 63-point advantage.
The Democratic advantage has shrunk by 12 points.
“This to me was absolutely stunning,” Enten said, noting that the Democratic lead among black voters is now “actually smaller than any lead from 2006 to 2021” – a stretch of time that includes Barack Obama’s two presidential runs.
What makes this more than just a polling curiosity is that the gains appear to be sticking. Democrats got shellacked with black voters in 2024. Trump turned in what Enten called a “historically strong performance” with that group, and Democrats had their worst showing in a generation. The natural assumption would be that some of that was a one-cycle anomaly, and that current economic concerns and opposition to the war in Iran would erase the gains Trump made.
But the data says otherwise.
Pre-election polling ahead of 2024 showed Kamala Harris leading among Black voters by 63 points. That number now sits at 62 points. “Republicans are holding onto the gains that they made among African Americans in 2024,” Enten observed.
Whether these gains will stick after Trump leaves office remains to be seen, but as far as the 2026 midterm elections go, it’s clear there’s no Democratic bounce-back. The voters who drifted toward Trump or away from the Democratic Party haven’t come back. This is a huge problem for the Democratic Party coalition, which has relied heavily on the loyalty of black voters.
“The Donald Trump-led Republican Party is making gains among African Americans that we simply put have not seen the Republican Party make in a generation.”
Trump’s GOP is holding on to the generational gains they made with Black voters in the 2024 election.
The GOP has gained 12 pts on the Dems on party id with African Americans vs. Trump term 1 at this point.
Trump’s approval with Black voters is higher than it was in term 1. pic.twitter.com/EKiEv561jk
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) April 30, 2026
The implications of these numbers is huge for the 2026 midterms.
Southern states with competitive House and Senate races depend heavily on black voter turnout and margins. This means that if Democrats are hemorrhaging even a few percentage points of that support, the math gets ugly for them really
