A new poll on the popularity of prospective 2028 presidential candidates has found that only one Democrat scores highly with Black voters, with the rest performing less well than ex-KKK leader David Duke did in 2016.
The new Fall 2025 Yale Youth Poll examined the favorability ratings of potential candidates through several lenses, including race, and found that Black voters favored only former vice president Kamala Harris in any meaningful way.
The defeated 2024 nominee is picking up the support of 47 percent of respondents, who said they would vote for her if a primary were held today.
Her theoretical rivals all scored poorly, from California Gov. Gavin Newsom at 12 percent to New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 9 percent, ex-U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg at 4 percent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz at 1 percent, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro at 0 percent.
As was pointed out on X, Duke, the one-time Grand Wizard of the White supremacist hate group, scored a surprisingly high 14 percent approval rating among Black voters when he ran for the Louisiana Senate in 2016, according to a contemporary poll from the University of New Orleansâ Survey Research Center.
At the time, that score also put the KKK man ahead of Donald Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee challenging Hillary Clinton, among Black voters, according to The Washington Post.
Newsom led the Democratic field overall in the new poll with a 25 percent approval rating, scoring well among White, Hispanic, and Asian voters, followed by Harris, Ocasio-Cortez, and Buttigieg. Still, there was little obvious appetite for future campaigns from Walz or Shapiro.
Exactly the same running order emerged when support for the candidates was divided by age, with Ocasio-Cortez scoring most impressively with younger voters aged 18 to 44, but seeing little support from people aged 45 or older.
Newsom particularly distinguished himself with a 38 percent score from the over-65s. This demographic also took a shine to Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who chalked up an 18 percent rating.
Among Republicans, Vice President JD Vance led the pack comfortably, with a 51 percent approval rating overall, scoring particularly well with White and Hispanic voters and well ahead of potential rivals Donald Trump Jr, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, and Robert F Kennedy Jr.
However, Vanceâs commanding lead was shown to crumble in a hypothetical scenario in which President Trump were to make good on his threat to run for an unconstitutional third term, something he has repeatedly hinted at.
If Trump were to run again, he would have the support of 50 percent of Republicans, according to the Yale survey, dumping Vance down to 19 percent â still well ahead of all other comers.
That said, the poll also found that voters of all ages overwhelmingly disapproved of the 47th president, with the young scoring an overall approval rating of 43 percent to 55 percent disapproval.
The top five issues voters said they cared most about were the cost of living/affordability, 88 percent; democracy, 78 percent; Medicaid and Medicare, 73 percent; corruption, 72 percent; and election integrity, 72 percent, none of which are Trumpâs strong suits.
The poll appeared a day after the president delivered a rally-style address to his supporters in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, ostensibly to address their fears about affordability, during which he bragged about his supposed popularity among Black voters.
âLet me tell you â Black people love Trump,â he declared. âI got the biggest vote. I got the biggest vote with Black people. They know a scam better than anybody!â
In July, a Decision Desk HQ average of polls found that 71.5 percent of African-Americans disapproved of his presidency so far, while just 24.1 percent approved.
