By Jenn Jackson
January 23, 2025
On January 6th, 2021, people across the United States watched as Then-President Donald Trump incited mob violence on the US Capitol which the FBI has now classified as “domestic terrorism.” In response to his efforts to challenge his loss in the 2020 presidential election, Trump stood on the Ellipse, near the White House, and told his supporters to, “fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” according to NPR. Trump has since referred to the attack as a “day of love.” Then, in November 2024, a near majority of voters (49.9 percent) re-elected him. This month, with the ratification of the 2024 presidential election results, and the inauguration on January 20th, many have been looking back four years ago to understand how we arrived here. Specifically, regarding Trump, what political attitudes differ between young Latinx, AAPI, and Black voters? And, how have those differences among voters of color shaped recent elections?
Four years ago, many questioned if Trump should (or could) run for the White House again. The mounting election and civil fraud cases against him brought into question how a person could be both viable for US president and actively involved in countless criminal investigations. In July 2022, we asked young Americans if they thought former President Trump should even run in the 2024 election. Our results revealed a deeply partisan and racialized story. Across all racial groups, respondents were more likely to believe that Trump should run in 2024 if they also identified as Republican. However, even amongst Republicans, Black and AAPI respondents were less likely to say ‘yes,’ at 55 percent and 53 percent, when compared to White and Latinx respondents (64 percent and 68 percent, respectively).
When considering race alone, the distance between these racial group blocks remains clear. More than a third of white (39 percent) and Latinx (31 percent) respondents said that they believed that former President Trump should run for president in 2024. In comparison, only 16 percent of Black respondents and 21 percent of AAPI respondents agreed. For many, it may be surprising that Latinx respondents were more aligned with white Americans we polled. However, these descriptives offer some context to the vote totals in November 2024 which indicated that larger proportions of Latinx Americans voted for Donald Trump than did in previous elections for a Republican candidate. While these attitudes cannot be directly related to vote outcomes, they suggest that President Trump’s candidacy may have been taken more seriously among Latinx voters than Black and AAPI voters. While the vote results confounded many initially, our data suggest that these voter sentiments may have long existed prior to the 2024 election.
Interestingly, despite the low but varying proportion of respondents who believed that Trump should run for the presidency in 2024, there was no disagreement about whether he should be prosecuted for his crimes in trying to overturn the 2020 election results. Across every racial group, there was nearly unilateral agreement on this issue. Nearly all of our Black (94 percent), Latinx (91 percent), AAPI (93 percent), and white (92 percent) respondents said ‘yes’ to this prompt. These results suggest that, despite concerns that Trump may have committed crimes against the country (including the crime of treason), many young respondents still supported his run for office. These findings seem counterintuitive on their face. But, they are in line with a number of conflicts which emerge in the July 2022 data.
Further highlighting the contradictions we found in relation to January 6th, the proportion of respondents who believed that Trump was guilty of crimes related to trying to overturn the 2020 election results, many young respondents also believed that Trump was guilty of the crimes in question. Again, more than two-thirds of Black (78 percent) and AAPI (70 percent) respondents responded ‘yes’ when asked about Trump’s guilt. A majority of Latinx (63 percent) respondents believed Trump was guilty. While slightly less than a majority, 48 percent of white American respondents also believed Trump was guilty. So, despite their beliefs in his guilt and the validity of his charges, many young Americans still believed Trump should have run in 2024. Though, young Black and AAPI Americans were the most likely to hold these views.
Perhaps the strongest indication that young Americans saw Trump as instigator of the January 6th coup is responses across racial groups concerning the conspiracy and Trump’s role in leading it. For white respondents, 22 percent believed the event was a conspiracy to overturn the election results. An additional 34 percent believed Trump to be at the center of that conspiracy. That means that more than half (56 percent) of white respondents believed January 6th to be an act of treason against the United States. Similarly, 23 percent of Latinx respondents believed it was a conspiracy and an additional 40 percent placed Trump at the center. Cumulatively, nearly two-thirds of Latinx Americans believed this was a treasonous conspiracy. These findings are powerful as they suggest that many young Americans may have been comfortable with voting for a candidate for president who they believed to have been actively involved in treason against their country of citizenship.
Unlike white and Latinx Americans, 54 percent of Black Americans believed that January 6th was a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election with Trump at the center. An additional 26 percent believed the conspiracy alone. Similarly, 49 percent of AAPI respondents believed Trump to be at the center of a conspiracy to overturn the results of the election with an additional 19 percent believing in the conspiracy alone. These findings suggest that Black and AAPI respondents were more confident that Trump was at the center of a conspiracy to overturn the election results than Latinx respondents. Overall, young Americans of color felt strongly that January 6th was not a “day of love” as Trump indicated. Rather, many of them saw that day as an overt act of political violence. Yet, that didn’t necessarily preclude them from seeing him as a potential president.
While these data don’t tell the full story, they reveal the complexities of voter beliefs and behaviors that may not be obvious. Moreover, they suggest that there is a great deal of heterogeneity among young Americans that may transgress traditional racial and party expectations. As we move forward in a new Trump Administration, these diverse attitudes and beliefs will be critical for us to remember.
The GenForward Survey is associated with the University of Chicago. May 2024 responses were collected from July 1st, 2022, through July 14th, 2022, among a nationally-representative sample of 4,201 adults ages of 18+ representing the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The overall margin of error is ±2.88 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
Jenn M. Jackson (they/them) is a queer androgynous Black woman, an abolitionist, a lover of all Black people, and an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University in the Department of Political Science. Jackson’s book, Black Women Taught Us, is a critical analysis of why Black women’s women’s freedom fighting has been so overlooked throughout history. Jackson’s research is in Black Politics with a focus on group threat, gender and sexuality, political behavior, and social movements. Jackson is a columnist at Teen Vogue, the author of peer-reviewed articles at Public Culture, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and the Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy, and the author of several forthcoming book chapters on the intersections of race, gender, class, and politics. Jackson received their doctoral degree in Political Science at the University of Chicago in 2019. Learn more about Jenn & the GenForward researchers here.
