The question in any national-election cycle regarding black voters is not whether Republicans can win that demo. It's whether they can figure out how to even compete against Democrats' near-monopoly in it. Black voters usually give 88-90% of their vote loyally to Democrats, and the only functional question until now is how enthusiastic their turnout will be rather than how the vote will split.

Until now is perhaps the operative qualifier. According to a new Wall Street Journal poll, rumors of Donald Trump's success in making inroads with black voters appear to be accurate, especially among men. Joe Biden won that demo 87/12 in his narrow 2020 victory, but the new poll shows Biden barely hanging onto a majority, although there is a catch to that comparison too:

More Black men said they plan to back Donald Trump this fall, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll of seven swing states.

While most Black men said they intend to support Biden, some 30% of them in the poll said they were either definitely or probably going to vote for the former Republican president. There isn’t comparable WSJ swing-state polling from 2020, but Trump received votes from 12% of Black men nationwide that year, as recorded by AP VoteCast, a large poll of the electorate.

In the WSJ poll, 11% of Black women said they were either definitely or probably going to vote for Trump. In 2020, the AP poll found, 6% of Black women nationwide backed Trump.

Did you spot the 'catch'? This is an apples-to-oranges comparison. The WSJ didn't do swing-state polling in 2020, so they're using national polling in that cycle. That's problematic, as black voters in deep-blue states will likely split differently, and thus the difference may not be quite as dramatic.

Or perhaps it will be. We can make this more of a direct comparison by using exit polling from 2020 in the absence of an analogous pre-election swing-state survey in that cycle. One of the states in the WSJ survey is Wisconsin, a must-win state for Biden this time around. In 2020, exit polls showed Biden winning 92% of the black vote and 86% of the black male vote. If Biden has lost 30 points among black men and Trump has picked up 20 points, that may well spell the difference in a state that Biden only won by 0.6% in 2020. 

Let's take a look at the other swing states in the WSJ poll. Biden won Michigan by a more comfortable 2.8% in 2020, and Biden has been pandering hard to Dearborn's pro-Hamas/anti-Semite demo in a desperate attempt to keep the state in his column. Four years ago, Biden won 92% of the overall black vote and 88% of the black male vote, both of which make up a larger percentage of the overall electorate in Michigan (12%) than they did in Wisconsin. A significant shift to Trump there may put the state at risk of going red in November, even with the larger 2020 gap for Trump to overcome.

How about Pennsylvania? Biden only won the Keystone State by 1.2% in 2020, and he did that by winning 92% of the overall black vote and 89% of the black male vote. Thirty-point shifts away from Biden among 11% of the electorate could easily wipe out that gap, even setting aside how Biden is likely losing turnout enthusiasm in other demos, thanks to his deep unpopularity and unfavorability since the Kabul bug-out. 

If Trump gains enough black votes in these three states to flip them -- or if Biden loses enough of them -- then Trump becomes president as long as he holds all the rest of his 2020 wins. That's without even bothering to look at the other four states in the WSJ survey -- like Georgia, for instance, which Trump only lost by 12,000 votes and 0.3%. Black voters make up 29% of the Georgia electorate, 88% of whom voted for Biden overall, while 83% of black men did the same. If Biden only gets 60% of that vote the next time out, he could win Pennsylvania and still lose the election if Trump flips Georgia.

And all of this doesn't even take into account Biden's erosion among Hispanic voters.

It's not just the men, either. Black women aren't as enthusiastic about moving across the aisle for Trump, but almost half of those polled in these swing states aren't buying Biden either:

In a sign that Biden hasn’t yet won commitments from many of these voters, some 42% of Black women in the survey fell into a group that the Journal pollsters say are up for grabs in the election, or still persuadable in their vote choice. These voters say they have not yet decided on a candidate, might vote for an independent or third-party option or are likely—but not certain—to back one of the major-party candidates.

While Latino women and Black men in the survey also signaled in large numbers that they remain persuadable in their vote choice, the share of Black women is noteworthy, given that they are among the most loyal Democratic groups in the electorate.

That's not just a red flag for Democrats; it's a screaming tornado siren. And this skepticism comes with a black woman on Biden's ticket -- Kamala Harris, whose sole purpose was to keep black women from peeling away. 

With all this said, take it with a grain of salt. The election is in seven months, and voting habits are tough to break. Some of these voters will likely come home between now and Election Day, but that brings us back to the enthusiasm/turnout issue. If they're already this sour on Biden, do they come home to him rather than vote for Trump ... or do they just stay home?