In Europe, the concept of “suburbs” can be pejorative, but in the United States, it symbolizes the opposite. The outskirts of cities, full of single-family homes, private gardens and parked cars, are the embodiment of the old “American dream” that now seems to be fading. But these quiet areas, around the country’s large and medium-sized cities, can become Kamala Harris the next president of the country if she manages to mobilize moderate – or conservative – families disillusioned by Donald Trump– and the middle-class women who live there.
THE latest survey The Wall Street Journal places Harris as a leader among suburban voters with a 7-point lead over Trump, while for ReutersAccording to Ipsos, this distance is 6 points. In such a tight scenario, in which the rest of the polls avoid differentiating them and give the same technical equality, this advantage represents a stronghold for the Democratic campaign.
This is why, after giving her “final argument” to the entire country from Washington DC, Harris is traveling the country from suburb to suburb: it was only on Wednesday that she was in Harrisburg (Pennsylvania), Raleigh, (North Carolina) and Madison (Wisconsin). Three medium-sized cities where the suburbs turn their backs Hillary Clinton in 2016 and four years later, in 2020, led to Joe Biden at the White House for the minimum.
“I’m a Republican, voteAnd by Harris»
“There are four things I hate in politics: dishonesty, populism, isolation and wasteful spending. Trump and Vance represent the four things to me, so I will vote for Harris,” a Republican activist from the Raleighin North Carolina, who followed the lead of Republican politicians like former Congresswoman Liz Cheney or the former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger.
For his part, Harpera student from Pennsylvania who now resides in New York admits to having noticed “a tension“It’s very palpable in the neighborhood where my parents live.”
“Almost no one talks about politics there at the moment,” he adds.
Pennsylvania was instrumental in confirming Biden’s victory after agonizing days of recounts in 2020. It was in the Philadelphia suburbs, populated primarily by middle-class residents and very educatedwhere he and Harris received enough votes to win with the minimum and take the 19 delegates provided by the state, by a difference of 80,000 votes.
“I’m considering going there,” confides the student. “Everyone knows that this area is decisive and I fear that the situation will become tense.”
Since August, Harris has visited Pennsylvania a total of 13 times. The last one this Sunday. Trump, for his part, did so in 11. That’s almost twice as many visits as the second state that hosted the most rallies Harris: MIchigan, with 7 events.
In 2020, Democrats’ traditional support in swing states fell: although they received more than 90% of the vote from the African American community, Their participation fell by 20% and that of Hispanics also fell by 18%.. However, it recorded strong participation in the privileged neighborhoods of its two major cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Target: Nikki Haley’s accessories
Another piece of information that particularly fuels Democrats’ expectations in these areas are the results of the Republican Party primaries in Pennsylvania: there, Nikki Haleythe only opponent to have resisted Trump to the end, obtained 16% of the support of Republican activists. In other words, more than 150,000 conservatives voted against Trump. Biden’s team, before his withdrawal from the race, studied support by district and, according to the newspaper Policyreached 20 and 25 percent in upper-middle-class counties in the Philadelphia region.
Convincing these voters, with conservative ideology but moderate tendencies, is the fundamental objective of this last part of the campaign.
Suburbs of other cities, such as strait (Michigan) and Atlanta (Georgia), also concentrated the support that gave Democrats victory in the 2018 congressional elections and the 2020 presidential elections.
“College-educated voters have been Republican for decades, but now they’re moving away from Trump, from his toxicity,” he told the newspaper. Jim Messinadirector of Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, told the newspaper Policy. In other words, while rural areas and workers without a college education are loyal to Trump, conservatives from the wealthier or more educated classes are fleeing him.
Women, everything can depend on them
This is a “seismic change” fundamentally led by women, for whom the repeal of the legislative framework that guaranteed access to abortion in the country – decreed by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court in 2022 – further accelerated the transition.
The latest ad from the Democratic campaign shows two white, middle-class couples going to vote. Although the husbands, dressed somewhat cartoonishly as Trump supporters, ask to “vote well,” the wives decide to check Harris’ box and Tim Walz. It is a video that is far from the usual tone of Democrats, keen to show more diversity in their communications, and which has been criticized as conservative and stereotypical, but its defenders say it is aimed at a group specific that the party had abandoned.
Part of this process explains why even North Carolina, the only swing state Trump held on to in 2020, now has Tump and Kamala close in the polls. “The Republican Party is ruined and classic conservatism is dead,” says the North Carolina Republican activist.
The mystery of Maricopa
In this context, Arizona also stands out, located in the “Wild West” of the United States, it has different demographic characteristics than Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the suburbs are also key for Harris.
60% of its population is concentrated in Maricopa, a single county located around the state capital, Phoenix, the fifth most populous city in the United States, ahead of other better-known cities such as Philadelphia or Dallas.
There, Republicans have won elections continuously since 2000, but by a smaller margin with each call: in 2016, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton with 47% of the votes while in 2000 George W. Bush was imposed on Al Gore with 53%.
The change in trend was inevitable and was confirmed in 2020, when Biden obtained 50% of the vote to Trump’s 48%.
The main explanation for Biden’s victory, however, was in the demographic change that Phoenix has been experiencing for yearsone of the fastest growing capitals thanks to the arrival of Latinos (more than 30% of the population) and young Californians looking for a more affordable cost of living in a quiet, familiar and low crime. prices.
In Arizona, moreover, the figure of John McCainRepublican candidate against Barack Obama in 2008 and representative of the most moderate wing of the Republican Party, is still very present to the point that there are three parties: “the Trump Republicans, the McCain Republicans and the Democrats”, according to an analysis from Noble Predictive. Insights, a political polling company based in Phoenix.
For all these reasons, no one should be surprised that on the night of November 5, campaign teams and the media focused all their attention on the quiet outlying neighborhoods in which the rest of the year seems to be spent nothing new.
