ANDREW NEIL: Believe it or not, it could prove to be the black and Hispanic voters that help Donald Trump win back the White House

Donald Trump held a campaign rally in the South Bronx on Thursday night. It would be hard to find another part of America less Republican than this once notorious New York borough, which is overwhelmingly black and Hispanic — and which voted 85 per cent for Joe Biden in 2020.

The Bronx was also once synonymous with urban squalor, decay and lawlessness. Many years ago, when most New Yorkers regarded it as a no-go area, I rather foolishly managed to get lost there while driving out of the city with a friend en route to Vermont.

We found ourselves in the midst of block after block of urban devastation that made the old Glasgow Gorbals' tenement slums look somewhat plush. I spotted a police station, which seemed the safest place to seek directions. 

We approached the duty desk. The cop looked at us suspiciously, then incredulously when he heard our British accents. I doubt he ever expected to meet two idiot white limeys in his precinct.

He pulled a pump-action shotgun from under the desk but — phew! — used it only as a pointer for the huge map behind him. He showed us the quickest way back to the interstate highway and growled: 'You stay on this highway 'til you've left the borough. Got it?'

Donald Trump may find support in the unlikeliest voter demographic - the black and hHispanic communities.

Could Trump come back for another term? His rally in the South Bronx on Thursday night drew a big crowd.

 We got it. As we left I realised we'd been in 'Fort Apache', so dubbed because it was surrounded by 'hostiles' and about to become the most famous police station in the world when a motion picture of the same name was released starring Paul Newman.

The Bronx has enjoyed something of a renaissance since then. It boasts pleasant residential quarters and increasing middle-class prosperity. Of course, it won't be voting Republican in the presidential election in November. But that wasn't the purpose of the Trump rally.

Rather, it was to show that no part of America is out of bounds for his brand of Right-wing populism — and to underscore the fact that he is making big inroads into the black and Hispanic vote, traditionally the reliable core of Democratic support, even in the most ethnically diverse of areas.

Trump's campaign managers, not sure how the evening would go, had secured a licence for a venue with a 3,500 capacity in a Bronx park. It was packed full, long before he began speaking and thousands more gathered outside trying to hear what he had to say.

True, there were more white folks than you'd normally find even in today's spruced-up Bronx. But the audience was still probably the most diverse ever at a Trump campaign event.

Democratic strategists are increasingly concerned about Trump's growing appeal to ethnic minorities. According to recent polls, nationwide support for the former president has more than doubled among black voters to 22 per cent from the 9 per cent he's reckoned to have won in 2020.

Republican strategists say it could be closer to 30 per cent come election day (November 5). Not an unreasonable forecast given that Trump's support among younger black people aged 18-49 already stands at 25 per cent.

Biden, of course, will still win a comfortable majority among black voters. But that's not the point. The President requires overwhelming support from them to be re-elected. If Trump can chip away at that, especially in the swing states, then Biden's chances of victory are seriously reduced.

According to recent polls, nationwide support for the former president has more than doubled among black voters to 22 per cent from 9 per cent.

The audience at the rally this week was one of the most diverse yet at a Trump campaign event. 

Team Biden knows that. Last Sunday he spoke in Detroit at a swanky dinner for the black establishment of Michigan, a swing state he has to win. But this is in some doubt because its relatively large Muslim population is disillusioned with his support for Israel.

Biden was honest. He told his audience of black powerbrokers it was black votes that had made him President in 2020 and he needs them again in huge numbers to win a second time. Earlier that day he'd spoken at an historically black college in Atlanta, where he pandered, somewhat shamelessly, to the sense of victimhood many blacks feel in America.

It's a measure of the panic in Democratic circles that the party has just released a commercial for digital platforms and TV stations in the swing states depicting Trump as a white supremacist who hates black people.

There's even a soundbite of him saying 'Of course I hate these people', a disingenuous use of a clip that comes from a 1989 CNN interview in which he was referring to black youths accused of a brutal rape in New York's Central Park.

It's not clear that the old Democratic pitch to American blacks resonates any more. Only 30 per cent of white liberals — the sort of folks who still determine Democratic policy — think crime is a major issue; more than 70 per cent of working-class and middle-class blacks think it is.

Nor is Biden's inability to control the border with Mexico popular with ethnic voters, especially the immigrants among them who made it to America the hard, legitimate way. The millions streaming illegally into the country are a far greater threat to their economic wellbeing than to well-off liberals who affect unconcern.

'I understand this country is built up of immigrants,' a woman at the Bronx rally from the Dominican Republic told the New York Times. 'But I came to this country in the right way. I didn't come in through the backyard, I came in through the front door.'

When it comes to Hispanics it's not even clear Biden can count on majority support any more. In 2020, exit polls suggested he had a strong 59 per cent to 38 per cent lead over Trump among Hispanics.

Supporters of former President Donald Trump watched him at a rally in the historical Democratic district of the South Bronx in New York City.

The Bronx, home to a large Latino community, is where Trump is seeking to gain more non-white votes.

 The latest polls show Hispanic voters splitting even-steven, with younger members of the ethnic group more inclined to favour Trump. If this is how they vote on November 5, the outcome will be devastating for Biden, especially since there are a lot more Hispanic than black voters.

The rise in non-white support for Trump is already helping him in the seven swing states that will determine the election. The latest New York Times poll has Trump leading in six of them (Biden has the slimmest of leads in Wisconsin), in some by big margins.

In Nevada, for example, generally regarded as a Democratic state, he was 13 points ahead.

In the latest poll of polls he is comfortably ahead (almost five points) in Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona — and within striking distance of victory in all the others.

Even in solidly Democratic New York State, which Biden walked with 61 per cent of the vote in 2020, the polls now give him just a nine-point lead.

I cannot believe New York will go Trump's way — Ronald Reagan was the last Republican to win it in 1984 when he was re-elected by a landslide — but it will be closer than last time. And the Democrats don't help themselves —when the achingly woke Democratic governor of New York describes those who went to the Bronx rally as 'clowns'. Shades of Hillary Clinton's disastrous stigmatising of Trump supporters as 'a basket of deplorables'.

The Democrats best resemble a duck at the moment. Placid and confident above water, pedalling furiously beneath it. Leading Democrats think Biden should be dumped but only say so in private and they don't know how to get rid of him unless he obliges them by standing down voluntarily.

A few have raised their heads above the parapet (leading Democratic pollster Nate Silver said this week Biden should 'step aside') but not enough to create a big 'Dump Biden' movement.

The Spanish words 'Jose Biden No Bueno' translate to 'Joe Biden Not Good' in English.

A supporter at the rally wore a yarmulke customised with Tump's slogan 'Make America Great Again'.

 But perhaps the date of the first Biden v Trump presidential debate is significant: June 27. There's never been such a debate this early in the election cycle. Neither man will even have been formally ordained as their party's official candidate by then. That happens at the conventions.

The Democratic convention is not until August 19-22 in Chicago. If Biden crashes and burns in the late June debate and the polls go from bad to worse, there would be time to press him to withdraw and turn Chicago into an old-fashioned brokered convention where the delegates would choose a new candidate.

It's a long shot but I wouldn't rule it out. The Biden campaign is getting shakier. His public performances grow ever more embarrassing. This week he referred to his vice president as 'the president' and predicted Africa's population would soon top 1 billion. It's already 1.5 billion. If this is emblematic of Biden's performance in the debate you can expect Trump to pounce and show no mercy.

A New York friend steeped in U.S. politics said to me yesterday that the election was between 'too crazy and too old'. It looks like we're stuck with 'too crazy' but 'too old' might not make it through the summer.