The road to the White House this year will run through Black communities — and all indicators point to a rough and tricky path for Democrats. Polls show a massive jump in the level of support among Black voters for Donald Trump, from 12 percent in 2020 to 17 percent now, according to a December survey by GenForward, a data project based at the University of Chicago. More recently, a New York Times–Siena poll had even more startling results, reporting that 23 percent of Blacks would vote for Trump if the election were held today. That would be the highest level of such support for a Republican presidential candidate since Nixon got 32 percent of the Black vote in 1960.

How is this possible? This is the candidate who launched his political career by promoting birther lies to undermine the legitimacy of Barack Obama, the first Black president. He has a long history of racist comments and activities, going back to his vilification of the Central Park Five. At every rally, he makes abundantly clear that his movement is a vehicle for aggrieved whites to take back the power they feel they have lost. Is Joe Biden so unpopular that he could lose even this most loyal of Democratic constituencies?

Black Republicans I spoke to think the Trump surge is real. “He’s going to double those margins and increase the margins with Hispanics as well,” says Scherie Murray, a Queens-based political consultant and a former member of the party’s state committee. “What we’re seeing now is people being frustrated with our political class and feeling it in the pocketbook.”

John Burnett, a Harlem businessman who is first vice-chairman of the New York State GOP, agrees. “It’s not a huge sample size, but sometimes when I travel to different places, like Milwaukee, Pennsylvania, and I talk to people, they say, ‘Trump is Trump — but I like what he has to say.’”

The overwhelming majority of Black voters swing Democratic, but it would be a big mistake for Democrats to simply write off recent........

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