The Democratic Party has been identified with urban America for nearly a century, and the city vote remains as blue as ever. In 2016, for instance, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in New York City 80 percent to 20 percent. In Chicago, it was 83 percent to 13 percent. In Los Angeles, 72 percent to 23 percent.
While city dwellers still serve as stereotypes of Democratic voters, they do not constitute an outright majority of the party. That distinction actually belongs to suburbanites. Indeed, the share of Democratic votes cast by residents of suburban counties — defined as counties within federal metropolitan areas in which a majority of residents live outside the principal city or cities — climbed to 53 percent in 2016 from 41 percent in 1988.
Over the past 25 years, many suburban areas near the country’s biggest cities have gone from dependable Republican strongholds to competitive battlegrounds or even safe Democratic territory. Recent Democratic gains in suburban Houston and Dallas are threatening to turn Texas purple. Outside Los Angeles, the seven districts of Orange County, once the geographic epicenter of the modern conservative movement, were swept blue in the 2018 midterms.
Rising electoral support in the suburbs of the nation’s largest population centers has allowed the Democratic Party to remain nationally competitive in an era of suburban population growth and increasing Republican dominance of rural America.
But Democrats have hit a wall in one critical respect: They have not extended this success to the suburban communities surrounding smaller cities, which remain predominantly — even increasingly — Republican. The suburbs surrounding Jacksonville, Fla., Indianapolis and Grand Rapids, Mich., for example, provide Republican candidates with more than enough votes to compete in, and often win, statewide elections.
To achieve a durable national majority, Democratic candidates will need to expand their appeal to the less diverse and more culturally conservative electorates of the small-metro suburbs, which remain aligned with the Republican Party even in the era of Donald Trump.
The limited scope of the Democratic suburban surge is evident on the electoral map. In the suburban counties of the 20 most populous metropolitan areas, Democratic nominees received an average of 56 percent of the two-party vote in the past three presidential elections — a significant improvement over the 44 percent won by Michael Dukakis in 1988. But the roughly comparable number of voters residing in the suburbs of the nation’s 250 smaller metro areas remained resistant to this trend.
In fact, in 2016, Mr. Trump received 58 percent of the major-party vote in these suburban counties, which was the best performance by any presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan’s landslide re-election in 1984.
The growing partisan divergence separating large-metro suburbs from those in the rest of the country extends to congressional elections. The share of suburban House seats won by Democrats in the top 20 metro areas rose to 59 percent by 2016 from 39 percent in the 1994 election. In the 2018 midterms, further Democratic gains from Loudon County, Va. (metro Washington) to Oakland County, Mich., (metro Detroit) to King County, Wash., (metro Seattle) left 76 percent of these seats in Democratic hands, prompting some political analysts to warn that President Trump’s unpopularity was leading to a coast-to-coast collapse of the Republican Party’s suburban support.
But in the nation’s smaller metro areas, where the share of suburban House seats held by Republicans rose to 71 percent after 2018 from 60 percent after the 1994 election, Republicans continue to thrive. Even last November’s “blue wave” hardly threatened Republican incumbents like Warren Davidson of suburban Cincinnati-Dayton, who won re-election by 33 percentage points; Gary Palmer of suburban Birmingham, Ala., who won by 38 points; or Francis Rooney of suburban Cape Coral, Fla., who won by 25 points.
Uneven patterns of racial diversification explain much of this growing partisan gap. In the top 20 metro areas, more than a third of adult suburban residents are now nonwhite, compared with less than one-quarter of the suburban population in smaller metros. The number of large-metro suburban House seats where members of racial minorities outnumber whites increased to 36 in today’s Congress from nine in 1993 and is poised to grow further after the national round of redistricting following the 2020 census. White voters in large metros are also politically distinctive, holding relatively liberal cultural views that make them more likely than whites elsewhere to support Democratic candidates.
While pundits once advised Democratic leaders that courting suburban support would require breaking with liberal orthodoxy, the party’s new electoral coalition of minorities and culturally progressive whites has allowed it to unite around left-of-center positions on issues from gun control to gay rights.
Still, internal tensions remain. House Democrats elected from majority-white suburban districts are nearly twice as likely to join the centrist New Democrat Coalition or Blue Dog Coalition as they are the Congressional Progressive Caucus. And some express concern that the recent publicity received by left-wing policy proposals like the Green New Deal will threaten the party’s popularity among their more economically moderate constituents.
The increasing Democratic strength within populous, racially diverse metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Houston and Phoenix will leave its mark on the electoral map as soon as the 2020 election, transforming Georgia, Texas and Arizona from Republican bastions to contested battlegrounds. A few other metro areas that are slightly smaller in size but comparable in demographic composition, like Las Vegas; Richmond, Va.; and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., are also likely to become increasingly critical sources of Democratic votes in national elections.
But President Trump’s historically strong performance in a string of smaller and more homogeneous suburbs from greater Scranton, Pa., to greater Des Moines proved pivotal in the 2016 election and could well recur in 2020. Broadening the Democratic tent to bring more of these socially traditionalist small-metro suburbanites into the fold would provide the party with a critical electoral advantage, but such gains will be difficult to achieve in an era of growing cultural warfare.
Rather than moving in a single partisan direction, American suburbia — like the nation of which it is a growing part — has split into incompatible halves of brightening red and deepening blue, frustrating both parties’ attempts to build a stable national majority on a foundation of suburban votes.
David A. Hopkins is an associate professor of political science at Boston College and the author of “Red Fighting Blue: How Geography and Electoral Rules Polarize American Politics.”
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | The Democrats Don’t Have the Suburbs Sewn Up Yet
Opinion | The Democrats Don’t Have the Suburbs Sewn Up Yet
The Democratic Party has been identified with urban America for nearly a century, and the city vote remains as blue as ever. In 2016, for instance, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in New York City 80 percent to 20 percent. In Chicago, it was 83 percent to 13 percent. In Los Angeles, 72 percent to 23 percent.
While city dwellers still serve as stereotypes of Democratic voters, they do not constitute an outright majority of the party. That distinction actually belongs to suburbanites. Indeed, the share of Democratic votes cast by residents of suburban counties — defined as counties within federal metropolitan areas in which a majority of residents live outside the principal city or cities — climbed to 53 percent in 2016 from 41 percent in 1988.
Over the past 25 years, many suburban areas near the country’s biggest cities have gone from dependable Republican strongholds to competitive battlegrounds or even safe Democratic territory. Recent Democratic gains in suburban Houston and Dallas are threatening to turn Texas purple. Outside Los Angeles, the seven districts of Orange County, once the geographic epicenter of the modern conservative movement, were swept blue in the 2018 midterms.
Rising electoral support in the suburbs of the nation’s largest population centers has allowed the Democratic Party to remain nationally competitive in an era of suburban population growth and increasing Republican dominance of rural America.
But Democrats have hit a wall in one critical respect: They have not extended this success to the suburban communities surrounding smaller cities, which remain predominantly — even increasingly — Republican. The suburbs surrounding Jacksonville, Fla., Indianapolis and Grand Rapids, Mich., for example, provide Republican candidates with more than enough votes to compete in, and often win, statewide elections.
To achieve a durable national majority, Democratic candidates will need to expand their appeal to the less diverse and more culturally conservative electorates of the small-metro suburbs, which remain aligned with the Republican Party even in the era of Donald Trump.
The limited scope of the Democratic suburban surge is evident on the electoral map. In the suburban counties of the 20 most populous metropolitan areas, Democratic nominees received an average of 56 percent of the two-party vote in the past three presidential elections — a significant improvement over the 44 percent won by Michael Dukakis in 1988. But the roughly comparable number of voters residing in the suburbs of the nation’s 250 smaller metro areas remained resistant to this trend.
In fact, in 2016, Mr. Trump received 58 percent of the major-party vote in these suburban counties, which was the best performance by any presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan’s landslide re-election in 1984.
The growing partisan divergence separating large-metro suburbs from those in the rest of the country extends to congressional elections. The share of suburban House seats won by Democrats in the top 20 metro areas rose to 59 percent by 2016 from 39 percent in the 1994 election. In the 2018 midterms, further Democratic gains from Loudon County, Va. (metro Washington) to Oakland County, Mich., (metro Detroit) to King County, Wash., (metro Seattle) left 76 percent of these seats in Democratic hands, prompting some political analysts to warn that President Trump’s unpopularity was leading to a coast-to-coast collapse of the Republican Party’s suburban support.
But in the nation’s smaller metro areas, where the share of suburban House seats held by Republicans rose to 71 percent after 2018 from 60 percent after the 1994 election, Republicans continue to thrive. Even last November’s “blue wave” hardly threatened Republican incumbents like Warren Davidson of suburban Cincinnati-Dayton, who won re-election by 33 percentage points; Gary Palmer of suburban Birmingham, Ala., who won by 38 points; or Francis Rooney of suburban Cape Coral, Fla., who won by 25 points.
Uneven patterns of racial diversification explain much of this growing partisan gap. In the top 20 metro areas, more than a third of adult suburban residents are now nonwhite, compared with less than one-quarter of the suburban population in smaller metros. The number of large-metro suburban House seats where members of racial minorities outnumber whites increased to 36 in today’s Congress from nine in 1993 and is poised to grow further after the national round of redistricting following the 2020 census. White voters in large metros are also politically distinctive, holding relatively liberal cultural views that make them more likely than whites elsewhere to support Democratic candidates.
While pundits once advised Democratic leaders that courting suburban support would require breaking with liberal orthodoxy, the party’s new electoral coalition of minorities and culturally progressive whites has allowed it to unite around left-of-center positions on issues from gun control to gay rights.
Still, internal tensions remain. House Democrats elected from majority-white suburban districts are nearly twice as likely to join the centrist New Democrat Coalition or Blue Dog Coalition as they are the Congressional Progressive Caucus. And some express concern that the recent publicity received by left-wing policy proposals like the Green New Deal will threaten the party’s popularity among their more economically moderate constituents.
The increasing Democratic strength within populous, racially diverse metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Houston and Phoenix will leave its mark on the electoral map as soon as the 2020 election, transforming Georgia, Texas and Arizona from Republican bastions to contested battlegrounds. A few other metro areas that are slightly smaller in size but comparable in demographic composition, like Las Vegas; Richmond, Va.; and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., are also likely to become increasingly critical sources of Democratic votes in national elections.
But President Trump’s historically strong performance in a string of smaller and more homogeneous suburbs from greater Scranton, Pa., to greater Des Moines proved pivotal in the 2016 election and could well recur in 2020. Broadening the Democratic tent to bring more of these socially traditionalist small-metro suburbanites into the fold would provide the party with a critical electoral advantage, but such gains will be difficult to achieve in an era of growing cultural warfare.
Rather than moving in a single partisan direction, American suburbia — like the nation of which it is a growing part — has split into incompatible halves of brightening red and deepening blue, frustrating both parties’ attempts to build a stable national majority on a foundation of suburban votes.
David A. Hopkins is an associate professor of political science at Boston College and the author of “Red Fighting Blue: How Geography and Electoral Rules Polarize American Politics.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
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