How Trump’s Winning Coalition Sees Foreign Policy as the Midterms Approach
Six voting groups helped deliver Trump’s 2024 win. A new CFR report examines these voters’ views of foreign policy and investigates whether they will stay with Republicans or return to the Democrats in 2026 and 2028.
“It’s the economy, stupid” is a now-venerable line about why voters back a certain candidate—even when the choice appears unexpected. But it’s not only the economy; for some voters, and for very large groups of them at times, foreign policy issues can be important and even determinative.
A study group at the Council on Foreign Relations spent the last year looking at the foreign policy views of several voting groups that contributed to President Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election. This included Hispanic, Black, Jewish, Muslim, evangelical, and white working-class Americans who continued to back or shifted their support to Trump.
Trump’s 2024 coalition was especially fluid. It brought in a larger number of Black men as well as Hispanic and Jewish voters, while Trump held his roughly one-third share of Muslim voters as their support for the Democratic candidate collapsed. For both parties, the obvious question is whether those movements represent permanent changes or one-time effects.
Historically, voters are not driven by international relations or global dynamics, but CFR’s study group found that the foreign policy views of these voting groups—which played a role in Trump’s 2024 victory—could have a significant bearing on the upcoming midterm elections and even the 2028 presidential election.
Hispanic voters favored Democrats by twenty-five points in 2020. In 2024 they split evenly between Kamala Harris and Trump. For this group, foreign policy is not per se a central issue, but the foreign policy–adjacent issue of immigration is. Current immigration enforcement policies may not affect Hispanic voters because they are citizens, but polling indicates that there is concern within this voting group that someone close to them could be deported. This has made Trump’s immigration enforcement policies widely unpopular. Although the Hispanic population in the United States is very diverse, this issue is important to all parts of it and will push Hispanic voters back to the Democratic Party—as polls already suggest.
Among Black voters, Trump nearly doubled his support from 2020—from 8 percent to 15 percent—in the 2024 election. There were interesting gaps based on gender (significantly more male than female voters supported Trump) and on family history (significantly more Caribbean and African immigrants supported Trump than U.S.-born Black voters) in the 2024 voting results. Although Black voters are generally more concerned with domestic issues—particularly the economy and health care—the economic effect of long-term conflicts affected these voters in the last election. The sense that foreign wars divert resources from domestic needs swayed Black voters’ views of the U.S. government’s decision to dedicate resources to conflicts such as the war in Ukraine, for example.
For white working-class Americans, religion was critical to their vote in 2024. evangelicals were much more likely to vote for Trump in the last election cycle than non-evangelicals. Foreign policy was not a central issue, but it also got mixed with economic security matters: immigration was widely perceived to be affecting the U.S. job market, leading to support for lower immigration levels and a closed border. Spending overseas (on foreign aid, for example, but also on military involvements) was also unpopular due to the fear that it takes funds away from the safety net here at home. White working-class voters are not isolationists and do support a strong U.S. military, but foreign entanglements are often viewed as diverting dollars at a time when voters’ own economic security is under pressure.
Jewish and Muslim voters were the clearest exceptions to the rule that economic issues dominate elections. Trump won only a small increase in Jewish support in 2024, but the growing number of antisemitic incidents in the United States and the growing hostility to Israel in parts of the Democratic Party coalition may change that in future elections. The question is whether Jewish voters, a reliable Democratic constituency for decades, will become swing voters. Diaspora communities in recent foreign elections—such as those in Australia, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom—have moved to the right when the major left-of-center party became anti-Israel and the major right-of-center party was pro-Israel. A first sign may be the U.S. Senate election in Michigan, where the differences between the Democratic and Republican candidates on Middle East policy are stark and have attracted so much attention in the Michigan Jewish community.
Muslim voters have been swing voters without a powerful attachment to either party, and Trump won about one-third of them in 2024. Muslim voters showed a gender gap (more men than women voting for Trump) and a gap between Arab, African, Asian, and white Muslim voters versus Black Muslim voters (a larger share of the latter group supported Harris). The question is whether Muslim voters will now swing away from Republicans in the midterms due to the issue of Gaza—and early polling indicates that the answer is yes. Muslim voters were unique in this study in having foreign policy issues as their primary concern; for them, the economy was a distant second. Because the Trump administration is unlikely to change its policy toward Israel, it seems Republicans will see a significant drop in Muslim support.
These points, and the others discussed and illustrated with data in the report, hold lessons for both parties, though these will become far clearer in the 2028 presidential election than in the upcoming congressional races.
Here are some of the core questions, as I see them, that will need to be addressed if Republicans aim to hold together Trump’s winning coalition in the 2026 and 2028 elections:
- Because the Hispanic community is so diverse and, in many ways, culturally conservative, Republicans could build support there and diminish the Democrats’ advantage. While Hispanic voters are not supportive of illegal immigration and do support closing the border, the fierce immigration enforcement measures of the Trump administration that offend and anger Hispanic voters will keep them in the Democratic column. Republican candidates in 2026 and 2028 have a clear choice: separate themselves from those Trump measures or watch Hispanic voters become loyal Democrats for a generation.
- How both parties handle issues relating to Israel could prove to be a central dynamic of the upcoming elections. Will the Republican Party maintain its current close relationship with Israel? Will the Democratic Party grow increasingly critical of the country and indulge candidates whose comments or actions have been perceived by many Jewish voters as antisemitic? These trends are visible but not locked in concrete. Many Democrats could move back toward their long-standing support of Israel, especially if Israel has a different prime minister. But looking at U.S. politics since the Gaza war began three years ago, the better bet is that more U.S. Jews will become swing voters.
- Roughly 21 percent of Black male voters supported Trump in 2024. The study group traced much of that to depressed Democratic turnout rather than defection, but the gender and generational gaps inside it suggest a Black electorate less uniform than commonly assumed. On many issues, including foreign policy, Black voters are moderates, unattracted by extreme positions or candidates on the far right or left. But Republicans will need to think hard about issues that can attract these voters, and the party should remember that Black immigrants have voted differently from others in the community, though their U.S.-born children have not.
- Religion is a critical marker among white working-class voters, and the appeal of Republicans is much greater among evangelicals than non-evangelicals. But these groups are changing. evangelical foreign policy interests of the past, such as support for Israel, humanitarian work overseas, and help for persecuted Christians, evoke less support today, and the appeal of populism and “America First” is wider even though it may contradict some former evangelical causes. These voters want a strong United States but have their own view of what that means—less immigration and a strong military but less intervention overseas. Add in economic policy issues, and evangelicals too could become swing voters. But cultural issues could keep them in the Republican camp if the Democratic Party’s left wing drives its positions on these divisive policy matters.
The voting coalitions of winners and losers in 2026 and 2028 will be new, as various groups of voters swing—but just who swings and how far are the critical questions.
Looking at the groups we studied is a reminder of their complexity and diversity; speaking about “Black voters” or “Hispanic voters” understates the way voters separate by gender, age, origin, faith, and geography. Even voters who are “not foreign policy voters” have strong views on issues related to foreign policy, and choices they make will affect U.S. foreign policy in the coming years.
While foreign policy is not typically the top item on voters’ minds, for millions of voters it will certainly be on the ballot.
This work represents the views solely of the author(s). The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.