The GOP's suburbia problem

[BushKerry04]

I'm curious to see what others on here think of my analysis of what's coming in future election cycles.

We can see that suburban voters are becoming more Democratic. Take a look at the following results from the past five presidential races in suburban counties:

Morris County, NJ  - Bush +11, Bush +16, McCain +8, Romney +9, Trump +4
Loudon County, VA - Bush +16, Bush +12, Obama +8, Obama +5, Clinton +17
Wake County, NC - Bush +7, Bush +2, Obama +14, Obama +11, Clinton +20
Larimer County, CO - Bush +14, Bush +5, Obama +9, Obama +6, Clinton +5

Compare that to rural voters, who are thought to be solidly Republican. But look at these four rural counties and how they voted in the past few cycles:

Erie County, OH - Gore +5, Kerry +7, Obama +13, Obama +13, Trump +9
Coos County, NH - Bush +5, Kerry +2, Obama +18, Obama +17, Trump +8
Kittson County, MN - Bush +10, Kerry +1, Obama +19, Obama +6, Trump +22
Roosevelt County, MT - Gore +12, Kerry +11, Obama +26, Obama +15, Trump +7

The bigger picture here is that Trump won several rural states, such as Michigan and Wisconsin, that no other Republican has been able to win since George H.W. Bush in 1988. But Democrats won states with large suburban populations that used to be solidly Republican. Additionally, Trump underperformed past GOP nominees in states with large suburban populations. Some believed Trump couldn't do well with Hispanic voters and that's why he underperformed past GOP nominees in Texas and Arizona. This could be true, but these are also states where he didn't do as well as past nominees in suburban communities.

What's even more problematic for the GOP is that Trump's win in rural states could be a one-time thing. Democrats didn't get the votes they needed out of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to win Pennsylvania, for example. However, the suburban trend towards the Democrats started pre-Trump and my opinion, it was only accelerated by Trump.

On a personal note, I think the Republican Party must embrace the libertarian movement if it wants to win elections. Suburban Republicans aren't interested in a federal ban on all abortions or banning transsexuals from military service. They are interested in free markets and individual liberty. That's the best way forward for the GOP, especially as millennials move into the suburbs (which is why the trend is more Democratic.)

With all that, I predict this is what you'll see in 2028 or 2032. Obviously, blue = Republican, red = Democratic, and green = swing state. What I am essentially predicting is demographic changes in Texas and Arizona as well as growing suburbs in Georgia and North Carolina will move these states into the swing-state column from the Republican column. I still have Florida, Iowa, and Ohio as swing states because I don't expect massive changes from where they are now. Even worse for the Republicans, it's quite possible that states like North Carolina and Texas that are growing gain more electoral votes as they trend more purple.

 I would also add that this is generic R vs. generic D. I'm not saying it's impossible for the GOP to win. But I am saying in presidential elections, the party will likely see some challenges unless they move away from authoritarianism and towards libertarianism in my opinion.

I would appreciate feedback to hear what you all think!

DEM - 279
GOP - 126
Swing - 133

  

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The only problem with this is that millenials are not libertarians and are not going to be motivated by libertarian policy solutions.

The reason that the GOP is losing the suburbs is because the suburbs are changing. They are becoming more diverse, older whites are moving out or dying off and whites who used to be middle managers at IBM are being replaced by young professionals working at universities, the gov't or other sectors that make them lean more liberal. They are culturally less religious and the overriding economic concern is not freedom from overbearing taxes (which motivated their Reaganist parents) but crushing debt from over priced colleges. Thus they will look to the Democrats, long the party of debtors relief to formulate a policy response to use government to alleviate that debt at the cost of higher taxes.

Another factor is that this process, where it doesn't outright flip the white vote statewide, will pull it down just enough so that the GOP lacks the margins among whites necessary to offset Democratic margins among minorities. This happened in VA, will happen soon in GA and AZ and eventually will hit places like Mississippi even, where the GOP depends on a ridiculously unsustainable 80%+ GOP white vote to keep the state Republican.

As the Democrats cater to this by necessity (the Democrats are increasingly becoming more and more dependent on these types of suburbs in places like CA, NY and VA), they will alienate and push away those same rural voters, lower middle class suburbanites and working class voters.

You are right, these suburban trends have been underway for a long time and Trump just accelerated them. But you are wrong when it comes to rural areas. We have seen consist pro-GOP trends in Western PA, West Virginia, Upper Peninsula of Michigan and other areas stretching back to 2000. Beginning in 2010 we saw these trends spread further across the belt from Maine to Minnesota, and again in 2014, and Trump utilized these trends to break down the blue wall.

The GOP will evolve naturally in a way that fits the contours of its emerging base, and in reaction to that of the Democrats.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Also you are wrong about Philadelphia turnout. Clinton's margin was down by about 4,000 votes or so, but that was almost all because Trump got more cops and blue collar whites in places like Ward 66 than Romney who alienated these people with his 47% comments. I cannot speak to Pittsburgh as easily, but Clinton held up okay in Allegheny county.

What pushed Trump to victory was massive margins and vote flips from Obama to trump in rural counties across the state. He only got 20,000 votes less than Obama and about 300,000 more votes than Mitt Romney. while Clinton was about 70,000 votes off from Obama. Those 70,000 voters were not missing, they were voting for Trump, along with probably 50,000 or so more (when you account for Romney-Clinton voters in Chester and other places) and another 150,000 in increased turnout.

Now Wisconsin and Michigan are a different story, in those places turnout among African-Americans evaporated in Milwaukee and Detroit and Trump got less votes than Romney in Wisconsin.

[Roronoa D. Law]

The GOP problem is that it will end up like Alabama senate race on election night were the rural turnout wasn't as expected and they run out of votes to early in the election night. GOP needs to remember that not all large counties are like Wayne and St louis (city). Most are gaining population and the margin continues to become more Democratic soon there won't be enough votes in the rural areas to make up for the lost ground.     

[Nyvin]

With the GOP losing suburbs and gaining in rural areas...they also run the risk of "self packing" their votes in fewer and fewer districts for state leg and congressional elections.    Kind of an inverse of what happened to the Democrats for most of the past decade with big urban areas.

[SingingAnalyst]

The composition of suburbs is changing, as an increasingly racially and ideologically mixed group of urbanites move to the suburbs and many suburbanites move to exurbs or rural areas, or even to gentrified urban downtowns.

Macomb County, MI was once almost exclusively a collection of "white flight" suburban communities; by 2010 it was about 10% Black. Similarly for Oakland County, MI.

[RINO Tom]

The GOP problem is that it will end up like Alabama senate race on election night were the rural turnout wasn't as expected and they run out of votes to early in the election night. GOP needs to remember that not all large counties are like Wayne and St louis (city). Most are gaining population and the margin continues to become more Democratic soon there won't be enough votes in the rural areas to make up for the lost ground.     

There aren't enough rural voters in virtually any state to drown out suburban and urban voters, despite the urban/rural narrative.  The vast majority of GOP voters in virtually every state aren't rural... for now.  They're well on their way to ing that up completely, though.

[UncleSam]

By 2032 I think there will be a lot more changes than just the ones you are predicting.

For starters, MI, WI, PA, MN, and OH will all either be lean or strong R by then. The major cities are losing population and rural areas are growing. Do the math.

OR will be a swing state by then for the same reason. MS will be a swing state too by this point, and GA will be at least lean D if not stronger.

Other than that this looks mostly right to me, didn't do the math on the EVs but the map will probably be roughly where it is now in 2032: more strong D states but more lean R states among the toss ups. Neither party will fall into a rut anywhere near way you're projecting for the GOP, time has a funny way of causing change like that. If one party were to become so severely disadvantaged as you forecast, the party will change.

I doubt that the way forward is a libertarian platform for Rs, even if I'd love to have one of the major parties actually somewhat hold my views. Rs are more likely to cave on some fiscal policies / becoming a big deficit party like the Democrats than they are to just accept that gay people can get married and abortion is legal. I do think that the gay marriage argument will take a back seat in the coming years though, as that is nearing a critical mass past which a party won't really go.

[Tekken_Guy]

The problem with the GOP is that Trumpism has no suburban appeal whatsoever. Trump's extreme positions on immigration, issues with women, skepticism on climate politics, brash personality, and ties to white nationalism are turning people off. The partisan split is now a cosmopolitan/parochial divide becoming all about identity politics and culture wars rather than policy.

[PoliticalShelter]

This should really be called; "The GOP's Inner-Suburbia problem" since this is the area that the pre-90s GOP utterly dominated and still had the advantage as recently as 2004.

The GOP's overall strategy since the 80s hasn't really changed; the GOP still base their campaigns against the plight of the inner city. The problem is that the issues the caused the GOP to dominate the inner suburbs in the 80s have largely receded; Crime rates have never been lower, urban areas have managed to have had a strong recovery since the 90s and the soviet union obviously doesn't exist anymore.

If the GOP wants to win back areas (or at least gain ground) they need to actually campaign on issues that these inner suburbites actually care about. Something the movement conservatives who make up a large chunk of the Never Trump group are ardently opposed too.

Trump isn't really the cause of this, the GOP was already losing ground in these areas. The only reason they didn't completely collapse in these areas until Trump was because they had the advantage of being the anti-incumbent party during the Obama years, with all the electoral advantages that come with it.

Once the GOP became the incumbent party, with a figurehead who was not a good fit for these voters, it was only natural that they were going to begin to severely implode in these areas.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

This should really be called; "The GOP's Inner-Suburbia problem" since this is the area that the pre-90s GOP utterly dominated and still had the advantage as recently as 2004.

The GOP's overall strategy since the 80s hasn't really changed; the GOP still base their campaigns against the plight of the inner city. The problem is that the issues the caused the GOP to dominate the inner suburbs in the 80s have largely receded; Crime rates have never been lower, urban areas have managed to have had a strong recovery since the 90s and the soviet union obviously doesn't exist anymore.

If the GOP wants to win back areas (or at least gain ground) they need to actually campaign on issues that these inner suburbites actually care about. Something the movement conservatives who make up a large chunk of the Never Trump group are ardently opposed too.

Trump isn't really the cause of this, the GOP was already losing ground in these areas. The only reason they didn't completely collapse in these areas until Trump was because they had the advantage of being the anti-incumbent party during the Obama years, with all the electoral advantages that come with it.

Once the GOP became the incumbent party, with a figurehead who was not a good fit for these voters, it was only natural that they were going to begin to severely implode in these areas.

Inner suburbs? Clinton won Stockton, Gwinnett County, San Bernardino, Palm Beach, Fort Bend, The Collar Counties, Loudon, Oakland County, Larimer County and a bunch more places besides. These are undoubtedly outer suburbs--quasi-exurban in places.

[Nyvin]

For starters, MI, WI, PA, MN, and OH will all either be lean or strong R by then. The major cities are losing population and rural areas are growing. Do the math.

False.

Ann Arbor, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Madison, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Columbus are all the state's primary growth hubs.   Lots of rural areas in those states are in decline (a majority are).  

The only three big cities in those states doing poorly are Detroit, Milwaukee, and Cleveland.

[MT Treasurer]

For starters, MI, WI, PA, MN, and OH will all either be lean or strong R by then. The major cities are losing population and rural areas are growing. Do the math.

Agreed, though MN will probably be a Tossup instead of lean R.

[BushKerry04]

By 2032 I think there will be a lot more changes than just the ones you are predicting.

For starters, MI, WI, PA, MN, and OH will all either be lean or strong R by then. The major cities are losing population and rural areas are growing. Do the math.

OR will be a swing state by then for the same reason. MS will be a swing state too by this point, and GA will be at least lean D if not stronger.

Other than that this looks mostly right to me, didn't do the math on the EVs but the map will probably be roughly where it is now in 2032: more strong D states but more lean R states among the toss ups. Neither party will fall into a rut anywhere near way you're projecting for the GOP, time has a funny way of causing change like that. If one party were to become so severely disadvantaged as you forecast, the party will change.

I doubt that the way forward is a libertarian platform for Rs, even if I'd love to have one of the major parties actually somewhat hold my views. Rs are more likely to cave on some fiscal policies / becoming a big deficit party like the Democrats than they are to just accept that gay people can get married and abortion is legal. I do think that the gay marriage argument will take a back seat in the coming years though, as that is nearing a critical mass past which a party won't really go.

The party has lost it's way. I think the only reason the GOP wins anymore is because the Democrats are too far left for most Americans.

The problem with the GOP is that Trumpism has no suburban appeal whatsoever. Trump's extreme positions on immigration, issues with women, skepticism on climate politics, brash personality, and ties to white nationalism are turning people off. The partisan split is now a cosmopolitan/parochial divide becoming all about identity politics and culture wars rather than policy.

I completely agree. We need to get back to policy!

This should really be called; "The GOP's Inner-Suburbia problem" since this is the area that the pre-90s GOP utterly dominated and still had the advantage as recently as 2004.

The GOP's overall strategy since the 80s hasn't really changed; the GOP still base their campaigns against the plight of the inner city. The problem is that the issues the caused the GOP to dominate the inner suburbs in the 80s have largely receded; Crime rates have never been lower, urban areas have managed to have had a strong recovery since the 90s and the soviet union obviously doesn't exist anymore.

If the GOP wants to win back areas (or at least gain ground) they need to actually campaign on issues that these inner suburbites actually care about. Something the movement conservatives who make up a large chunk of the Never Trump group are ardently opposed too.

Trump isn't really the cause of this, the GOP was already losing ground in these areas. The only reason they didn't completely collapse in these areas until Trump was because they had the advantage of being the anti-incumbent party during the Obama years, with all the electoral advantages that come with it.

Once the GOP became the incumbent party, with a figurehead who was not a good fit for these voters, it was only natural that they were going to begin to severely implode in these areas.

Even if you believe the GOP lost ground in these areas, and I do think they did to an extent, Trump accelerated the process and turned off more suburban voters. Trump made swing voters in suburbs solid Democrats.

Also you are wrong about Philadelphia turnout. Clinton's margin was down by about 4,000 votes or so, but that was almost all because Trump got more cops and blue collar whites in places like Ward 66 than Romney who alienated these people with his 47% comments. I cannot speak to Pittsburgh as easily, but Clinton held up okay in Allegheny county.

What pushed Trump to victory was massive margins and vote flips from Obama to trump in rural counties across the state. He only got 20,000 votes less than Obama and about 300,000 more votes than Mitt Romney. while Clinton was about 70,000 votes off from Obama. Those 70,000 voters were not missing, they were voting for Trump, along with probably 50,000 or so more (when you account for Romney-Clinton voters in Chester and other places) and another 150,000 in increased turnout.

Now Wisconsin and Michigan are a different story, in those places turnout among African-Americans evaporated in Milwaukee and Detroit and Trump got less votes than Romney in Wisconsin.

I think if the party embraces the libertarian message more, they can win over some younger voters and close the gap. I agree with you about rural voters helping bring Trump to victory.

What NCY said.

Also look at the suburban Atlanta county trends from 2004–>2016. 25-40 point swings across the metro.

The fact that Trump only won Georgia by 5 points is worrysome for any objective Republican.

With the GOP losing suburbs and gaining in rural areas...they also run the risk of "self packing" their votes in fewer and fewer districts for state leg and congressional elections.    Kind of an inverse of what happened to the Democrats for most of the past decade with big urban areas.

But will the GOP really make permanent gains in rural areas?

The composition of suburbs is changing, as an increasingly racially and ideologically mixed group of urbanites move to the suburbs and many suburbanites move to exurbs or rural areas, or even to gentrified urban downtowns.

Macomb County, MI was once almost exclusively a collection of "white flight" suburban communities; by 2010 it was about 10% Black. Similarly for Oakland County, MI.

Great point. This is why the GOP has to stop with this anti-immigration rhetoric if they want to win. I think on this issue, Bush, Kasich, or Rubio should be listened to more than they were in 2016.

The GOP problem is that it will end up like Alabama senate race on election night were the rural turnout wasn't as expected and they run out of votes to early in the election night. GOP needs to remember that not all large counties are like Wayne and St louis (city). Most are gaining population and the margin continues to become more Democratic soon there won't be enough votes in the rural areas to make up for the lost ground.     

There aren't enough rural voters in virtually any state to drown out suburban and urban voters, despite the urban/rural narrative.  The vast majority of GOP voters in virtually every state aren't rural... for now.  They're well on their way to ing that up completely, though.

The party elders don't get it.

For starters, MI, WI, PA, MN, and OH will all either be lean or strong R by then. The major cities are losing population and rural areas are growing. Do the math.

Agreed, though MN will probably be a Tossup instead of lean R.

I disagree because I think you have to rely on rural voters to give future GOP nominees a similar margin they gave Trump. Take Kittson County, MN. Trump won it by 22 points. The last GOP nominee to win it was Bush in 2000, who won it by 10.

[Young Conservative]

1. Suburbs are becoming more urban, exurbs are becoming suburbs. See Atlanta and Dallas.
2. Suburbs will trend back R with a non-Trump.

[libertpaulian]

1. Suburbs are becoming more urban, exurbs are becoming suburbs. See Atlanta and Dallas.
2. Suburbs will trend back R with a non-Trump.

...unless said voters associate GOP with Trump, which is possible.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If you take a more social libertarian message on some issues, yes you can win over some millennials, but millennials will never vote for a libertarian economic agenda, not when you account for their economic outlook and prospects, their economic priorities are likely to be closer to that of the Depression era Greatest Generation.

There is model of conservatism that would appeal to that ethos, but it is far more stability of family and community oriented than that wild west style, rugged individualism.

Also moderating the rhetoric on immigration is not going to make Hispanics a group of raving economic Randians and Foreign Policy Hawks (Bush, Kasich and Rubio). It will get your foot in the door, but if what you are selling is still the same old garbage, you can expect to get booted off the property. In that sense it is correct to say that the party elders do not get it, they seem to think that immigration policy is a magic bullet to making their long term corporatist agenda become a reality.

This would also be a good time to point out the massive shift on healthcare, so much to the point that this will likely be the last gasp for an administration hostile to the idea that the gov't is obligated to ensure that income is not a barrier to wellness. Between the long term cost of denying preventative care until diseases worsen and become more expensive, to the lost productivity and work hours, the values system of treating health care as a luxury to be earned through working is completely out of touch with reality and backwards. Wellness needs to be maintained so people can work, and we should prevent chronic conditions from turning into expensive operations and procedures. That is how you get health care costs under control.

Combine moderate economic populism with some pro-life libertarianism and then you would have a solid combination that is largely in tune with the base and can compete for the suburban tracts.

[Pragmatic Conservative]

Can someone please explain to me how “Trumpism” is supposed to be great for the gop in the future. It seems trump just took Romney policies for the most part and repackaged them in a right wing populist package. As we have seen already some of these same Trump-Obama voters are more then willing to switch back to the democrats over disappointment over how trump has governed. In some ways it seems republicans just got lucky in 2016 and never really learned from why they lost in 2012. I am still not convinced unless republicans actually move to the left on economics they can keep or expand their gains with wwc voters.

As for immigration no it probably won’t suddenly allow republicans to surge with Hispanics but it’s probably necessary if they hope to make major gains with this group.  Demographically I am not sure how republicans continue to win without improving their margins with non white voters.

[Adam Griffin]

All of the hot-takes we hear about how Trump's demeanor and personality are off-putting to the "well-educated lean-GOP suburban types" really don't apply to all of suburbia in terms of how people generally define it. I suppose you have to look at things in the context of "inner suburbia versus outer suburbia". My position is that the former is no longer suburban, but alas:

Inner suburbia has been drifting away from the GOP for quite some time. Its interests - more or less - are not substantially different than that of full urban areas. The GOP is no longer addressing these residents' concerns (and is in fact downright hostile toward them) because as the suburbs grew, so did these areas - particularly in their meaningful transition from suburban to urban (at least by most non-technical standards). Even without Trump as the nominee, many of these communities would have swung Democratic in 2016 due to the same factors that have made urban areas more Democratic.

Outer suburbia is where the well-educated pearl-clutchers live en masse who weren't already voting Democratic in large numbers prior to the previous election. In contrast with the inner suburbs - where pretty much everybody with decent incomes and advanced degrees who would ever vote Democratic was already doing so - the outer suburbanites are in fact being alienated by Trump / the very modern GOP.

However, I'd be willing to bet that the GOP's issues in outer suburbia are more or less already baked in at this point: there aren't going to be very many more people who will be turned off from voting GOP than who were in 2016. It's a one-time hit that very well may hold, but don't expect these areas to take the same trajectory as the inner suburbs have over the past couple of decades unless demography and/or the same fate that the current inner suburbs have faced occur there, too.

[Nyvin]

1. Suburbs are becoming more urban, exurbs are becoming suburbs. See Atlanta and Dallas.
2. Suburbs will trend back R with a non-Trump.

Like they did in the VA HoD?

[RINO Tom]

All of the hot-takes we hear about how Trump's demeanor and personality are off-putting to the "well-educated lean-GOP suburban types" really don't apply to all of suburbia in terms of how people generally define it. I suppose you have to look at things in the context of "inner suburbia versus outer suburbia". My position is that the former is no longer suburban, but alas:

Inner suburbia has been drifting away from the GOP for quite some time. Its interests - more or less - are not substantially different than that of full urban areas. The GOP is no longer addressing these residents' concerns (and is in fact downright hostile toward them) because as the suburbs grew, so did these areas - particularly in their meaningful transition from suburban to urban (at least by most non-technical standards). Even without Trump as the nominee, many of these communities would have swung Democratic in 2016 due to the same factors that have made urban areas more Democratic.

Outer suburbia is where the well-educated pearl-clutchers live en masse who weren't already voting Democratic in large numbers prior to the previous election. In contrast with the inner suburbs - where pretty much everybody with decent incomes and advanced degrees who would ever vote Democratic was already doing so - the outer suburbanites are in fact being alienated by Trump / the very modern GOP.

However, I'd be willing to bet that the GOP's issues in outer suburbia are more or less already baked in at this point: there aren't going to be very many more people who will be turned off from voting GOP than who were in 2016. It's a one-time hit that very well may hold, but don't expect these areas to take the same trajectory as the inner suburbs have over the past couple of decades unless demography and/or the same fate that the current inner suburbs have faced occur there, too.

Good post.

[BushKerry04]

If you take a more social libertarian message on some issues, yes you can win over some millennials, but millennials will never vote for a libertarian economic agenda, not when you account for their economic outlook and prospects, their economic priorities are likely to be closer to that of the Depression era Greatest Generation.

There is model of conservatism that would appeal to that ethos, but it is far more stability of family and community oriented than that wild west style, rugged individualism.

Also moderating the rhetoric on immigration is not going to make Hispanics a group of raving economic Randians and Foreign Policy Hawks (Bush, Kasich and Rubio). It will get your foot in the door, but if what you are selling is still the same old garbage, you can expect to get booted off the property. In that sense it is correct to say that the party elders do not get it, they seem to think that immigration policy is a magic bullet to making their long term corporatist agenda become a reality.

This would also be a good time to point out the massive shift on healthcare, so much to the point that this will likely be the last gasp for an administration hostile to the idea that the gov't is obligated to ensure that income is not a barrier to wellness. Between the long term cost of denying preventative care until diseases worsen and become more expensive, to the lost productivity and work hours, the values system of treating health care as a luxury to be earned through working is completely out of touch with reality and backwards. Wellness needs to be maintained so people can work, and we should prevent chronic conditions from turning into expensive operations and procedures. That is how you get health care costs under control.

Combine moderate economic populism with some pro-life libertarianism and then you would have a solid combination that is largely in tune with the base and can compete for the suburban tracts.

When someone is 18, 25, or even 30, I don't think the libertarian message on the economy has as much appeal. But I suspect as millennials enter their 30s and 40s and are having to balance their own budgets, that'll change. I would also add that Ron Paul's campaigns generated a lot of excitement amongst younger voters, and there were polls showing Gary Johnson tied Hillary Clinton with younger voters during the 2016 campaign. 

As far as immigration, let's remember that successful GOP candidates at the state and federal levels have either won the Hispanic vote or at least won enough as to contribute to a victory. George W. Bush won over 40% of the Hispanic vote and managed to win purple states with a lot of Hispanic Americans; I'm talking about Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico in 2000. Trump and Romney did poorly amongst Hispanics and lost the popular vote, Trump only won because of states without large Hispanic populations.

I think the GOP has made a mistake on health care. The party should have embraced Senator Rand Paul's plan which would have made the base happy since it repealed and replaced Obamacare, but it would have made less partisan voters happy because it improved our health care system by driving competition and helping those with preexisting conditions.

1. Suburbs are becoming more urban, exurbs are becoming suburbs. See Atlanta and Dallas.
2. Suburbs will trend back R with a non-Trump.

I completely agree with #1. In the long term, my prediction is the GOP will reject Trumpism. But in the short term, it's unclear if the GOP will reject Trumpism. Trump won 45% of the GOP primary vote in 2016 with help from formerly unaffiliated voters (the most conservative voters went for Cruz). But over 65% of Republicans still approve of Trump. We shall see.

All of the hot-takes we hear about how Trump's demeanor and personality are off-putting to the "well-educated lean-GOP suburban types" really don't apply to all of suburbia in terms of how people generally define it. I suppose you have to look at things in the context of "inner suburbia versus outer suburbia". My position is that the former is no longer suburban, but alas:

Inner suburbia has been drifting away from the GOP for quite some time. Its interests - more or less - are not substantially different than that of full urban areas. The GOP is no longer addressing these residents' concerns (and is in fact downright hostile toward them) because as the suburbs grew, so did these areas - particularly in their meaningful transition from suburban to urban (at least by most non-technical standards). Even without Trump as the nominee, many of these communities would have swung Democratic in 2016 due to the same factors that have made urban areas more Democratic.

Outer suburbia is where the well-educated pearl-clutchers live en masse who weren't already voting Democratic in large numbers prior to the previous election. In contrast with the inner suburbs - where pretty much everybody with decent incomes and advanced degrees who would ever vote Democratic was already doing so - the outer suburbanites are in fact being alienated by Trump / the very modern GOP.

However, I'd be willing to bet that the GOP's issues in outer suburbia are more or less already baked in at this point: there aren't going to be very many more people who will be turned off from voting GOP than who were in 2016. It's a one-time hit that very well may hold, but don't expect these areas to take the same trajectory as the inner suburbs have over the past couple of decades unless demography and/or the same fate that the current inner suburbs have faced occur there, too.

As people in their 20s choose to live in the suburbs or stay at home with their parents in the suburbs, the more the Democrats are helped in the suburbs. I stand by what I said above. I think long-term, the GOP will shift as a party. I don't know what impact that'll have on suburban voting trends. But I do believe the GOP has a choice to make. If the party embraces protectionism and an anti-immigrant mentality, then we lose.

Can someone please explain to me how “Trumpism” is supposed to be great for the gop in the future. It seems trump just took Romney policies for the most part and repackaged them in a right wing populist package. As we have seen already some of these same Trump-Obama voters are more then willing to switch back to the democrats over disappointment over how trump has governed. In some ways it seems republicans just got lucky in 2016 and never really learned from why they lost in 2012. I am still not convinced unless republicans actually move to the left on economics they can keep or expand their gains with wwc voters.

As for immigration no it probably won’t suddenly allow republicans to surge with Hispanics but it’s probably necessary if they hope to make major gains with this group.  Demographically I am not sure how republicans continue to win without improving their margins with non white voters.

Mitt Romney's candidacy was about opposing Obama's policies. There were no racial or class undertones in his campaign.

Other than that, I agree with you. At the state level, there are Republicans who have done well with Hispanic voters. In my home state, when Governor Chris Christie won re-election with 60% of the vote, he won 51% or so of Hispanic voters. The key is showing up and having a compelling message. Calling for deportations is not only bad policy, it's bad politics. Trumpism is a long-term disaster for the GOP.

The Republican Party has shifted to the left on economics. Ronald Reagan worked to reform the tax code by lowering rates and substantially reducing deductions and corporate loopholes. Reagan and the GOP embraced a strong dollar, free trade, and fewer regulations. Trump has embraced fewer regulations, but his tax cut didn't do a whole lot to make the tax code flatter and he's also embraced a weak dollar, protectionism, and corporate welfare. On top of that, the GOP didn't repeal and replace Obamacare as promised.

[x-Guy]

Yeah. Those are quite interesting numbers....

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If you take a more social libertarian message on some issues, yes you can win over some millennials, but millennials will never vote for a libertarian economic agenda, not when you account for their economic outlook and prospects, their economic priorities are likely to be closer to that of the Depression era Greatest Generation.

There is model of conservatism that would appeal to that ethos, but it is far more stability of family and community oriented than that wild west style, rugged individualism.

Also moderating the rhetoric on immigration is not going to make Hispanics a group of raving economic Randians and Foreign Policy Hawks (Bush, Kasich and Rubio). It will get your foot in the door, but if what you are selling is still the same old garbage, you can expect to get booted off the property. In that sense it is correct to say that the party elders do not get it, they seem to think that immigration policy is a magic bullet to making their long term corporatist agenda become a reality.

This would also be a good time to point out the massive shift on healthcare, so much to the point that this will likely be the last gasp for an administration hostile to the idea that the gov't is obligated to ensure that income is not a barrier to wellness. Between the long term cost of denying preventative care until diseases worsen and become more expensive, to the lost productivity and work hours, the values system of treating health care as a luxury to be earned through working is completely out of touch with reality and backwards. Wellness needs to be maintained so people can work, and we should prevent chronic conditions from turning into expensive operations and procedures. That is how you get health care costs under control.

Combine moderate economic populism with some pro-life libertarianism and then you would have a solid combination that is largely in tune with the base and can compete for the suburban tracts.

When someone is 18, 25, or even 30, I don't think the libertarian message on the economy has as much appeal. But I suspect as millennials enter their 30s and 40s and are having to balance their own budgets, that'll change. I would also add that Ron Paul's campaigns generated a lot of excitement amongst younger voters, and there were polls showing Gary Johnson tied Hillary Clinton with younger voters during the 2016 campaign. 

As far as immigration, let's remember that successful GOP candidates at the state and federal levels have either won the Hispanic vote or at least won enough as to contribute to a victory. George W. Bush won over 40% of the Hispanic vote and managed to win purple states with a lot of Hispanic Americans; I'm talking about Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico in 2000. Trump and Romney did poorly amongst Hispanics and lost the popular vote, Trump only won because of states without large Hispanic populations.

I think the GOP has made a mistake on health care. The party should have embraced Senator Rand Paul's plan which would have made the base happy since it repealed and replaced Obamacare, but it would have made less partisan voters happy because it improved our health care system by driving competition and helping those with preexisting conditions.

1. Suburbs are becoming more urban, exurbs are becoming suburbs. See Atlanta and Dallas.
2. Suburbs will trend back R with a non-Trump.

I completely agree with #1. In the long term, my prediction is the GOP will reject Trumpism. But in the short term, it's unclear if the GOP will reject Trumpism. Trump won 45% of the GOP primary vote in 2016 with help from formerly unaffiliated voters (the most conservative voters went for Cruz). But over 65% of Republicans still approve of Trump. We shall see.

All of the hot-takes we hear about how Trump's demeanor and personality are off-putting to the "well-educated lean-GOP suburban types" really don't apply to all of suburbia in terms of how people generally define it. I suppose you have to look at things in the context of "inner suburbia versus outer suburbia". My position is that the former is no longer suburban, but alas:

Inner suburbia has been drifting away from the GOP for quite some time. Its interests - more or less - are not substantially different than that of full urban areas. The GOP is no longer addressing these residents' concerns (and is in fact downright hostile toward them) because as the suburbs grew, so did these areas - particularly in their meaningful transition from suburban to urban (at least by most non-technical standards). Even without Trump as the nominee, many of these communities would have swung Democratic in 2016 due to the same factors that have made urban areas more Democratic.

Outer suburbia is where the well-educated pearl-clutchers live en masse who weren't already voting Democratic in large numbers prior to the previous election. In contrast with the inner suburbs - where pretty much everybody with decent incomes and advanced degrees who would ever vote Democratic was already doing so - the outer suburbanites are in fact being alienated by Trump / the very modern GOP.

However, I'd be willing to bet that the GOP's issues in outer suburbia are more or less already baked in at this point: there aren't going to be very many more people who will be turned off from voting GOP than who were in 2016. It's a one-time hit that very well may hold, but don't expect these areas to take the same trajectory as the inner suburbs have over the past couple of decades unless demography and/or the same fate that the current inner suburbs have faced occur there, too.

As people in their 20s choose to live in the suburbs or stay at home with their parents in the suburbs, the more the Democrats are helped in the suburbs. I stand by what I said above. I think long-term, the GOP will shift as a party. I don't know what impact that'll have on suburban voting trends. But I do believe the GOP has a choice to make. If the party embraces protectionism and an anti-immigrant mentality, then we lose.

Can someone please explain to me how “Trumpism” is supposed to be great for the gop in the future. It seems trump just took Romney policies for the most part and repackaged them in a right wing populist package. As we have seen already some of these same Trump-Obama voters are more then willing to switch back to the democrats over disappointment over how trump has governed. In some ways it seems republicans just got lucky in 2016 and never really learned from why they lost in 2012. I am still not convinced unless republicans actually move to the left on economics they can keep or expand their gains with wwc voters.

As for immigration no it probably won’t suddenly allow republicans to surge with Hispanics but it’s probably necessary if they hope to make major gains with this group.  Demographically I am not sure how republicans continue to win without improving their margins with non white voters.

Mitt Romney's candidacy was about opposing Obama's policies. There were no racial or class undertones in his campaign.

Other than that, I agree with you. At the state level, there are Republicans who have done well with Hispanic voters. In my home state, when Governor Chris Christie won re-election with 60% of the vote, he won 51% or so of Hispanic voters. The key is showing up and having a compelling message. Calling for deportations is not only bad policy, it's bad politics. Trumpism is a long-term disaster for the GOP.

The Republican Party has shifted to the left on economics. Ronald Reagan worked to reform the tax code by lowering rates and substantially reducing deductions and corporate loopholes. Reagan and the GOP embraced a strong dollar, free trade, and fewer regulations. Trump has embraced fewer regulations, but his tax cut didn't do a whole lot to make the tax code flatter and he's also embraced a weak dollar, protectionism, and corporate welfare. On top of that, the GOP didn't repeal and replace Obamacare as promised.

A strong dollar with free trade means a crap ton of outsourcing, means a crap ton of displaced workers, which means a crap ton of protectionist voters.

That is what synthesized the Trump base in the Midwest. These things don't occur in the vacuum, the next political impetus is always created among those left behind in the previous paradigm and exploiting the blind spots of its policy consensus.

Reagan played both sides on trade. He called for an American Free trade zone, but also slapped quotas on Japanese cars. Reagan was very much a dynamic figure and the key to his success was that his solutions were geared towards addressed the most pressing economic problem, stagflation.

The problem now is not stagflation, it is that no one has had a raise in 20 years and a generation of people is buried in college debt. There is not the political impetus for a Reagan redux in terms of policy specifics, but there was the political impetus for a redux in the Macro of responding to the present economic conditions on the ground that the establishment was ignoring.

The context and resulting policy priorities are different, but the paradigm of responding to the heretofore unrepresented economic needs is very much the same.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Republican Party has gotten into the business of substituting policy for principle and then expecting people to treat and regard them as unbreakable. Principles are timeless and unbreakable, policies by definition have to be dynamic and responsive to the existing problems on the ground. When they fail to do so for long enough, that is when people take up the pitchforks.

People are in a protectionist mood because they feel like they have been left to starve on the beach by the free trade establishment.