Democrats are feeling good about their prospects in 2024. There appears to be little interest in changing their party’s image, which remains pretty terrible in most voters’ eyes. …
The idea seems to be that the suburbs are full of liberal, highly-educated voters who are likely to be permanent recruits to the anti-MAGA army. There are certainly some, but actually-existing suburban voters are quite different—and more complex—than this caricature.
Contrary to popular perception, less than a third of the suburban vote nationwide is made up of college-educated whites, the presumed locus of maximum appeal for anti-MAGAism. In fact, about three-fifths of suburban white voters are working class (noncollege). …
And just how much hold do the Democrats have on suburban voters anyway? In the AP/NORC VoteCast survey, the most reliable election survey available, Democrats carried suburban voters nationwide by a single point in 2022. That’s a slippage of 9 points from the Democrats’ 10 point margin in 2020. Interestingly, the slippage in Democratic support from 2020 to 2022 was actually larger among nonwhite than white suburban voters.
These data indicate strongly that Democrats might not be in quite the catbird seat they think they are with suburban voters and therefore with the 2024 election. CONTINUED
Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot
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