For anyone interested in understanding how the Democrats were able to flip the House so dramatically last November, even in the face of Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression, I’d recommend taking a look at this Vox article by Dylan Scott. That the vote switching of suburban voters was a major driver of Republican losses has been generally reported; less explored has been what this fact actually means. Scott digs into why so many of these voters switched parties in 2018, which is both fascinating in itself and vital to understanding how the Democrats might build an enduring House majority.
The broad move of suburban voters in the direction of the Democratic Party is striking; drawing on research by The Washington Post, Scott describes how the more densely populated a suburb was, the greater the share of Republican losses. For instance, in 11 competitive races in rural districts, the GOP lost one seat; but in 9 heavily suburban districts, the GOP lost 6 seats.
Scott identifies revulsion against President Trump as a prime reasons for this major shift in suburban voting patterns, a dislike amplified by his particularly low ratings among female voters. But beyond this, these voters’ major political concerns are not shared by the president or the GOP, and vice versa. First, Scott points to their higher education and income levels as giving them a greater sense of economic security; this, Scott asserts, means that they “don’t respond to Trump’s hardline rhetoric on immigrants and a border wall in the same way rural voters do.” Likewise, their economic and educational status makes them less fearful of jobs being moved offshore.
Instead, their preoccupations are more “middle-class”: worries about health care costs, and about the Republican tax bill that scaled back breaks around state and local taxes that tend to help higher earners who tend to itemize their deductions. He also suggests that support for gun control and fighting climate change are also on these voters’ radar.
One might think that voters who’d supported the GOP in the past would reward the party for the strong economy, but Scott observes that, “In an unfortunate paradox for Republicans, the economy mostly chugging along fine freed up these voters to devote more of their time to concerns about the president, who has an unparalleled ability to focus all attention on himself at all times.” There’s merit in this point, but I wonder if it may understate the degree to which suburban voters were indeed motivated by economic concerns — such as rising health care costs — that the president and Republican Party have failed to address.
While a good chunk of previous GOP suburban voters chose not to support the party in 2018, I think it’s helpful to view this development from the flip side: that the GOP essentially moved away from these voters in both style and substance. The government shutdown over the last month has hammered home that opposition to immigration, and a broader agenda of white nationalism, is at the center of Donald Trump’s politics - a politics supported with little dissent by the broader GOP. If this is the new identity of the Republican Party, then a key question is why many previous GOP suburban supporters possess a sort of immunity to nationalist appeals. After all, other studies have found that Trump’s support, in particular, isn’t necessarily linked to socio-economic status in a direct way; there is plenty of evidence that those not directly threatened by the prospect of an immigrant taking away their jobs are nonetheless supportive of the president’s nativist stance. My guess is that these voters tend to be more integrated into, and thus more supportive of, an economy that depends on international trade. Beyond this, perhaps their professional lives bring them into more frequent contact with those from other nations and backgrounds than someone living in a more rural district, effectively humanizing those that the president would seek to demonize.
Given the outsize importance that suburban seats played in the Democrats’ midterm victory, and the need to retain control of competitive districts (I’m thinking in particular of the various squeakers in Southern California), I’m quite curious to see how the Democratic Party will seek to consolidate these gains, and what tensions might emerge between the perceived needs of suburban voters and the progressive forces pushing the party toward goals like a Green New Deal and health care for all.