Turning Affluent Suburbs Blue Isn’t Worth the Cost

Democratic politicians and strategists identify a “suburban revolt” against President Trump and right-wing Republican extremism as the key to victory in the 2018 and 2020 elections. …

The suburban vote has been closely divided since the 1990s. Barack Obama held his final campaign rally in 2008 in an exurb of Northern Virginia and carried a majority of suburban ballots nationwide.

Yet a majority of white suburbanites live in middle-income places such as Macomb County outside Detroit. An electoral strategy that prioritizes high-tech areas and inner-ring suburbs faces daunting demographic math when applied nationwide. It has left liberalism in a historically weak political position. CONT.

Lily Geismer (Claremont McKenna) & Matthew D. Lassiter (U. of Michigan), New York Times