Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson acknowledged on a Monday podcast that she was wrong when she predicted President Donald Trump would destroy her party’s progress with youth and minority voters.
Trump made significant inroads in the 2024 election with Latinos, blacks, Asians and youth voters, according to data Pew Research Center published on Thursday. During a discussion on “The Chuck ToddCast” about the new data, Anderson said it was shocking to her how significantly Trump disproved her expectations.
“The thing that has been the most surprising is someone like me, eight years ago, was completely hair-on-fire that Donald Trump is going to take everything that our party has been doing to try to win over young voters or voters of color, and he is lighting it all on fire and it is going to be unrecoverable,” Anderson said.
“And now, if I am a person that follows the data, now you have to acknowledge that those are the very groups that he put his reelection — he built it on those groups — and he did better with Latino voters, he did better with younger voters than any Republican has in 20 years,” she continued. “And that’s really remarkable.”
Trump secured 48% of the Hispanic vote in 2024, compared to 36% in 2020 and 28% in 2016, according to Pew. He also gained 7% among black voters and 10% with Asian voters from 2020 to 2024.
The president won 39% of voters ages 18-29, compared to 35% in 2020 and 28% in 2016, according to Pew.