President Donald Trump remains deeply unpopular among urban voters, but his net approval rating in Echelon Insights polling improved by 20 points between July and October.
That movement could influence the November 3 midterms because Democrats depend on commanding margins in major cities to carry competitive statewide races.
Even modest changes in support or turnout around Atlanta and Detroit could affect the Georgia governor’s race and Michigan’s open Senate contest.
Political scientists and Republican strategists told Newsweek that crime, extensive GOP advertising or changes within Trump’s urban coalition could be contributing, although they cautioned that volatility in a small polling subgroup may explain part of the movement.
Why It Matters
Midterm elections usually cost the president’s party seats, but the urban figures raise a separate question about whether Democrats can produce the margins they need from their strongest territory.
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What The Polls Show
Trump’s monthly urban figures in the Echelon Insights series were:
- July: 23 percent approval and 76 percent disapproval, net negative 53.
- August: 28 percent approval and 71 percent disapproval, net negative 43.
- September: 26 percent approval and 72 percent disapproval, net negative 46.
- October: 33 percent approval and 66 percent disapproval, net negative 33.
The 20-point net improvement consists of a 10-point increase in approval and a 10-point decline in disapproval, rather than a 20-point rise in support.
Trump gained ground in August, slipped three net points in September and then recorded his strongest urban result of the four surveys in October.
“The direction across four surveys makes this worth investigating, but the urban sample size and weighting are crucial,” Daniel Schatz, a political scientist and former visiting scholar at Harvard University, Stanford University and Georgetown University, said.
“A national poll can have a respectable overall sample while containing relatively few urban respondents.”
The October Echelon Insights Verified Voter Omnibus questioned 1,010 likely voters from October 15 to 19 and found Trump at 39 percent approval against 60 percent disapproval nationally.
Echelon Insights also reported a five-point Democratic lead on the generic ballot and identified living costs as the dominant electoral concern.
Its overall margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
Published toplines do not provide a separate margin of error for the urban subgroup, making that result less precise than the national figure.
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What Could Be Moving Urban Opinion
Costas Panagopoulos, a distinguished political science professor at Northeastern University, said Trump began from such a low position in cities that there was substantial room for recovery.
“One of the things that we can look to in cities has been improvements in crime,” Panagopoulos told Newsweek, while cautioning that federal policy may not deserve sole credit for local conditions.
John Thomas, a veteran GOP strategist, pollster and managing director of Nestpoint, argued that extensive advertising from MAGA Inc. and affiliated groups was emphasizing economic prosperity, public safety, border enforcement and energy production.
“That messaging is showing early traction with some Hispanic voters and younger urban independents who are more open to crime and immigration arguments,” Thomas said.
Brittany Martinez, a Republican strategist and former aide to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, also suspected that minority-voter movement was contributing.
“Moving from deeply unpopular to less unpopular could matter at the margins if that improvement holds and translates into Republican votes,” Martinez told Newsweek.
Schatz urged caution, noting that urban voters cannot be used as a substitute for racial or ethnic polling.
Establishing the cause would require racial breakdowns within the urban sample, ideally pooled across multiple surveys.
“The aggregate movement could reflect changes among white urban voters, shifts within several demographic groups, or differences in who answered each month’s survey,” he said.
He said the figures suggested “an erosion of Democratic dominance, rather than an urban embrace of Trump.”
The wider polling picture complicates that explanation.
Pew Research Center found Democratic House candidates leading Republicans by 51 percent to 24 percent among Hispanic registered voters and by 70 percent to 7 percent among Black voters, in a survey conducted from September 28 to October 4.
Another 23 percent of Black voters and 25 percent of Hispanic voters supported another candidate or remained unsure.
The survey of 5,062 U.S. adults was conducted online and by telephone and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1.6 percentage points for the full sample.
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White House Points To Trump’s Coalition
White House spokesman Davis Ingle said Trump had assembled “one of the most robust coalitions in political history with the MAGA movement” and remained the Republican Party’s “unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator.”
Ingle credited the administration with tax cuts, lower prescription-drug costs, tighter border enforcement, increased energy production and private-sector job growth.
“The choice has never been more clear: doubling down on President Trump’s winning, commonsense agenda or the Democrats’ extreme liberal policies and obstruction,” Ingle told Newsweek in an emailed statement.
Why Atlanta And Detroit Matter
Schatz said Republicans could benefit from reducing Democratic margins without coming close to winning either city.
“In a close statewide contest, narrowing a large Democratic margin can be decisive,” he said. “The electoral value lies in reducing the Democratic vote surplus that Republican candidates must overcome elsewhere.”
Martinez agreed that modest gains could matter around Atlanta or Detroit, but said she would want to see the movement sustained across several polls.
A national urban result cannot prove that either metropolitan area is changing.
Their electorates differ, while statewide outcomes also depend on suburbs, rural participation and the candidates themselves.
Jason Cabel Roe, a Michigan-based Republican strategist and principal of Roe Strategic LLC, said Republicans were making more deliberate efforts in Black communities.
He cited three Michigan Republicans as examples: party veteran Mike Rogers, who is facing Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist, for an open Senate seat; John James, the party’s gubernatorial nominees, who is running against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson; and incumbent Representative Tom Barrett.
Barrett is seeking reelection in Michigan’s competitive 7th Congressional District against Democrat William Lawrence, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, and Green Party candidate Shane Dedrick.
Rogers has opened an office on Detroit’s Avenue of Fashion, a notable investment for a Republican campaign inside the heavily Democratic city, while both parties are pursuing undecided residents and working to raise turnout.
Democrats have historically relied on winning more than 85 percent of the vote in Detroit, according to Roe.
“If turnout is low and a sliver of voters give Republicans an opportunity, it could be the reason Republicans win,” he said.
Roe compared the risk to Michigan’s 1990 gubernatorial election, when Republican John Engler unexpectedly defeated Democratic Governor Jim Blanchard.
He said Detroit Mayor Coleman Young’s refusal to put the full strength of his political organization behind Blanchard was widely viewed as one factor in the result.
In Georgia, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic nominee, is running against Republican healthcare executive Rick Jackson.
A 270toWin average of five recent polls put Jackson at 48.4 percent and Bottoms at 46.6 percent, underscoring why metropolitan margins could matter.
A Turnout Shift Or A Political Realignment
Lower Democratic participation could prove as consequential as voters moving toward Republicans.
“A voter who disapproves of Trump but stays home provides Democrats with no electoral protection,” Schatz said, adding that approval figures alone cannot establish an enthusiasm gap.
The October result therefore establishes a narrower point: Trump’s deficit among urban voters has contracted in one polling series.
Whether that reflects a durable political change will depend on subsequent surveys and, ultimately, who turns out.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.
Contact Newsweek editor on this story: Edward Pearcey.