My colleague, David Wasserman wrote a (typically) insightful analysis on GOP state Sen. Dan Bishop’s narrow win in Thursday’s special election in North Carolina’s 9th district. His main conclusion was that the special election continued a trend we’ve seen since 2016 of suburbs voting more Democratic, while small town and rural areas are turning an even deeper shade of red. …
But, what we also saw in this election was a suburban vs. exurban divide, with the Democratic candidate doing well in the suburbs around Charlotte, but not making up much ground in the further out exurbs. …
Boston College political scientist David Hopkins has measured this suburban disparity in a paper he wrote called “The Suburbanization of the Democratic Party, 1992–2018.” He argues that using ‘suburban’ as shorthand for anywhere that’s not a city or small town/rural is missing the real story of the suburban vote. CONT.
Amy Walter, Cook Political Report