"new" suburban voters

[Bandit3 the Worker]

What is the basis for your opinion?

Look what happened in Kentucky. Ben Chandler did far better than expected in rural areas, yet far worse than expected in suburban areas.

[dazzleman]

I don't know too much about the Kentucky race, but I would say that it can be tricky using local races to predict national trends.  Local issues and individual candidates can impact on state elections, and you can be sure that a Democrat running in Kentucky only will not run on the same type of issues as a national Democrat.  So a local candidate can craft his message more to local conditions, while a national candidate has to satisfy a much larger constituency.

[Nation]

Part of the difficulty in finding a solid trend in all of the suburbs is because not all suburbs are simply huge houses with white folks.  Where I live, Crofton, is in Anne Arundel county which I believe went for Bush about 52-44 percent in 2000. On one side of a road here, there is a community of upper-middle class homes, mostly Republican I would gather, judging by the countless amount of Bush/Cheney bumper stickers.  

On the other side of the road is a huge amount of fairly-priced, small townhouses, more diverse, an extremely different type of enviornment.  Many suburbs are like this, although I'm guessing it will shift more and more to the right with NEW suburban communtities -- and with new communities means new, expensive houses (which usually means Republican)

[opebo]

Dazzleman's right, the isolation from crime, poor people, and other social problems in the suburbs is one thing that allows them to vote Democratic.  I think this is mostly true of very upper-middle-class-to-wealthy and Northeastern suburbs in particular.  In Missouri the suburbs are quite Republican.  I think the key is a combination of social and economic issues.  In the Northeast and parts of the West Coast, suburbanites are socially liberal and also seem to have a sort of sense of liberal economic guilt, perhaps due to their high incomes.  In the Midwest, South, and Mountain areas suburbanites are generally more moderate-income (a decent house is 200K there), and are more culturally conservative.  Also, the farthest out, newest suburbs - exurbs? - tend to be very Republican.  However, I think that all suburbs will trend more Republican in 2004 because of terrorism - a general realization that it really matters to *their own interests* who they vote for.

[opebo]

Rich suburbs will be among the few places to go Republican in 2004. The trend towards Republicans in rural counties is history.

Not so.  Unless by trend you mean the percentage win will not be any higher than in the past - that may be so.  Bush may be stuck at 75% or so in the rural areas.  But his winning the vast majority of rural votes is not in any doubt.  Same is true further down the ticket.  Rural voters gave us the Senate in 2002.  In my state Senator Talent barely scraped a victory on the back of huge majorites in rural and outer suburban counties while losing massively in the cities.  And he's a city boy!  But a Republican one..

As far as possible arguments to the contrary, I'd say the only good one I can think of is that most military personel are from the rural areas.  If casualties have a political impact it would be here.  Obviously the other source of recruits - the inner city - is going Dem anyway.  But I don't think casualties have the potential to shift the rural vote more than a couple of points.

[Beet]

Yes the rural vote is guranteed a large majority to Republicans. The city vote is supposedly to go a large majority to Democrats, but once again there are MAJOR exceptions such as virtually all big Texas cities, Miami and San Diego. I would suspect there are exceptions to the "rural rule" in New England, but I haven't seen the numbers, and it would just be the exception that makes the rule. However it is really the suburban vote that make up the large central bulk of the voters. One issue of interest is that the shift in population due to the housing boom and the economic/geographic profile of those participating in it and driving it. New houses are being built at a rate much faster than population growth, so the people must be coming from somewhere. I would guess that they are coming from older suburbs and people from cities are moving into those burbs. In other words the same trend we have been seeing since the 1950s or even the 1920s, with the population spreading itself out. But maybe not.

Also it looks like the entire state of Missouri is trending Republican except for St. Louis and a couple counties outside St. Louis that may be the suburbs of that city but I do not know. In 1976 Carter did well in many Missouri counties but failed to carry St. Louis county. In 1980 Reagan won both St. Louis and neighboring Jefferson county. So did Bush Sr. (carried both with majorities) in 1988 even though Dukakis won 48% of that state. However in 2000 with Gore losing the state with just 47%, he carried both counties by majorities. Using Leip's map you can also see that many other counties that voted Democratic during Republican wins/close elections in 1976/80 and 1988 have now shifted Republican for 2000. Most striking is the Democrats' loss of Dunklin county, which went Democrat every election year except from 1976 onwards except 1984.

[NHPolitico]

One of the most striking electoral developments in the 1990s was the capture by the Democrats of the upper middle class suburban votes in some sections of the country, such as the northeast, the midwest and the west coast.

These are areas that had voted pretty strongly Republican on a consistent basis going back a long way.

Does anybody want to make any predictions on how these areas will vote in 2004 for president?  The suburban vote could make the difference in states like Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois and California.

Will national security issues, and the threat of Democratic tax increases (even people just scraping by in these expensive areas would be considered "rich" under the Democratic tax plans) turn these people back to the Republicans, or will they stick with the Democrats for other reasons, perhaps such as social issues?

We learn how "security moms" vote for president. The suspense of it all.

[NHPolitico]

and the threat of Democratic tax increases (even people just scraping by in these expensive areas would be considered "rich" under the Democratic tax plans) turn these people back to the Republicans, or will they stick with the Democrats for other reasons, perhaps such as social issues?

I think they may buy into the "I'll only raise taxes on the top 2% or 1% or whatever the percent of the week is and keep tax cuts for little ole you" of Kerry and Lieberman.