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HCP
Sr. Member
Posts: 2,540
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« on: February 15, 2024, 09:12:08 PM » |
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Fairly trivial question as there are not that many truly suburban seats - I.E. one where a significant proportion of the workforce commutes to a major city in another congressional district, or even one where the district itself is mostly influenced by an out-of-district major city. I feel like "suburban" sometimes is more of a vibe - sometimes a self-reinforcing relevant to this question as a "battleground" between GOP rurals and Democrat cities - that is borne out of medium-density residential areas, but the reality is that most of American non-metropolitan cities just look Like That, maybe with a spruced up "historic" Main Street. But with the more specific definition of suburbs, the only places where the math really works out for that are fairly large metros, and a lot of districts usually have a genuine mix of urban, suburban, and rural areas.
IF we're limiting to swing districts that lack that sort of suburban area, then there's a more limited number. But off the top of my head a lot of Northeastern swing district fall in this group - ME-02 (mix of rural + small/medium towns), NH-02 (similarly, although there are a few Boston exurbia towns in this district as well as the medium city of Nashua), the present configurations of NY-18 and NY-19 (medium/small towns, college towns, rural areas), and PA-07 and PA-08 (both containing small metros, which does include suburbs, but really are more self-contained within each respective district rather than genuinely suburban).
Similarly, districts where a large proportion of the population resides in smaller cities and towns and Democrats generally hold up better in rural areas than nationally - think WI-03, MN-01 and MN-08, IA-01 and IA-02 - though these areas are the ones most precipitously slipping away from swing status and toward the GOP. The new NC-01 and GA-02 add the wrinkle of racial polarization. MT-02 is also worth considering - a combination of small/medium city and rural areas. Aforementioned CO-03 is a good example too, but interestingly the most "urban" parts of the district, Grand Junction, is also the largest net contributor of votes for the GOP.
Another example that is questionably non-suburban is IL-17; in appearance many of the small- and medium-sized cities in the district (Peoria, Bloomington, the Quad Cities, Rockford) look suburban, but really aren't in any meaningful sense of the word.
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