Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign has seen a marked turn-around among college-educated voters who arguably cost Trump critical votes in swing states in 2020. New data indicates Trump’s surging popularity amongst college-educated voters is mainly driven by voter opinion that Trump is the better-suited candidate to revive the U.S. economy and put an end to the illegal immigration crisis at the U.S. southern border.

In 2021, over 75 percent of college-educated Republicans said they wanted a candidate other than Trump to run in 2024. By the start of this year, Trump’s negative trend among college-educated Republicans had reversed entirely. An early January Suffolk University/USA poll found about 60 percent of Republican college-educated voters now support Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Entrance polls conducted by CNN during the 2024 Iowa Republican Caucus found former President Trump had made a 16-point gain among college-educated voters compared to 2016’s entrance polling.

Nearly three years of President Joe Biden’s radical left-wing government have led college-educated voters to reconsider Trump. University New Hampshire professor of political science Dante Scala emphasized the importance of voters being able to compare presidential administrations in a recent interview, saying: “I think issues that we hear … immigration, the economy, inflation, all those things I think leads a lot of those voters to say, ‘You know, things were actually pretty good during that Trump presidency. Can we go back to that?’”

Prof. Scala points to the perceived weakness and inaction of the Biden government both at home and abroad as a key drive behind Trump’s recovery among college-educated voters. “I think a lot of college-educated Republicans say, ‘Yeah, he tweeted too much, he was out of control sometimes, but there was strength there,” Scala said.