Why did the Indianapolis and Richmond (and Portland and SLC) suburbs swing left?

[ottermax]

In the few areas with leftward swings there are pretty clear explanations:
Atlanta and Dallas metro - diversification and growth in formerly extremely Republican suburbs
Washington, Colorado, NC, and MI rural areas - remote workers, tourism, and nature motivated migration
Plains states - rural depopulation, Republicans maxed out, maybe Liz Cheney appealed here?
Western NC - Hurricane Helene

but the one area that surprises me as I look through the left swinging counties is two suburban areas - Indianapolis and Richmond. Portland and SLC suburbs also shifted left but to a lesser extent and might have reasonable explanations. Across the country suburbs shifted right even in areas that have seemed promising for Democrats like Williamson County, TX.

What drove these countervailing shifts here?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Richmond and specifically Chesterfield County is partially due to similar reason to what we saw in some Metro Atlanta and Dallas Counties - rapid black growth.

Indianapolis is twofold - many of these suburbs started from a very Conservative baseline for the region, but also even though they’re not as diverse many of these donut counties are still experiencing growth pushing the county left. Like Hancock County has recently gone from entirely rural to some suburbs - even if those suburbs are mostly white and R-leaning it’ll still push the County left. Also another person theorized that Pence being off the ticket and openly opposing Trump could’ve given Harris a marginal boost in the Indianapolis metro

SLC - once again many of these suburbs are starting from a very Conservative baseline, Mormons are slowly becoming a smaller share of the population in favor of more liberal transplants and of the Mormons who remain, they have never liked Trump. It generally seems like Mormons are one group that swing slightly against Trump this cycle.

Portland is possibly political self-sorting? That’s honestly one of the more suprising ones to me.





In the Southwest, many of these “promising Democratic suburbs” that shifted right can be primarily attributed to Trumps gains with Hispanics and Asian voters. That’s obviously the case in Maricopa and Clark Counties, but in TX places like Fort Bend, Collin, and Williamson counties are a lot more diverse than most give them credit for - in hindsight it’s honestly somewhat suprising Biden 2020 did as well as he did in these counties

[有爭議嘅領土 of The Figgis Agency]

The only Metro PDX county that shifted D was Clark County WA, which has a fairly high R baseline and is getting a lot of transplants from the OR side of the Columbia River in search of cheaper housing and lower taxes. Washington and Clackamas County both swung R, as did I suspect the relatively downscale and non-college eastern Multnomah County suburbs. (I think Multnomah County precinct results are out but I’m too lazy to do the deep dive to check swings.)

[New World Man]

The rich men north of Richmond moved south.

[He's turned to dust now, one of the chosen few]

Underestimate the queer ex-Mormons of inner SLC at your own risk.

(Hispanics in West Valley City and environs moved R though, ofc)

[EastOfEden]

Utah - Mormons have never liked Trump, Republicans have a lot of room to fall because of how suburban and educated the state is, Utah has a notably extreme partisan age gradient.

Underestimate the queer ex-Mormons of inner SLC at your own risk.

(Hispanics in West Valley City and environs moved R though, ofc)

You joke, but I'm pretty sure some neighborhoods in the southeastern part of SLC proper consist entirely of queer ex-Mormons at this point lol

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

So being an born and raised Hoosier, I don't have a rock solid answer on why the Indy area has swung so much, but I have some anecdotes that might (?) be informative:

My older brother moved to Indy in 2011 to study at IUPUI, and has lived there ever since, getting married, buying a house, and planning to build a family (parents are patiently waiting...). As a teenager, I hated the 2.5-hour drives from The Region^TM to go visit him and see his soccer games. I thought Indianapolis was an unbearably boring and stale city. Nothing happens there. I was (and still am) a Chicago loyalist, through and through.

However, something seems to have changed over the past 10 years or so. Suddenly the inner city is getting massively renovated, with all those old houses getting fixed up and gentrified as many young people liked the low cost of living in Indy and decent local economy and decided to stay. The downtown area has also vastly improved, with many new restaurants, bars, and stores opening up. I visited my brother in 2023 and went out on the town with him and his wife. That night, I found one of the best EDM clubs I have ever experienced in the U.S. of A. there: The Patron Saint. Seriously, if you're ever in town, go there.

Many people I knew from high school moved there first to study at IUPUI or University of Indianapolis, and then many people who went to Purdue or IU's main campuses ended up living there. Now that we are all in our late-20s/early-30s, people are getting married and having children, people are also moving out into the suburbs or outskirts of the city as well. Indiana is attracting a lot of people from around the country and the world for its universities, and then people are no longer decamping to places like Chicago or Cali any more, but settling in Indianapolis. I think the universities in Indy itself have also vastly expanded their facilities to accept more students. The city has also gotten a lot more diverse, both economically and demographically. I always had the image of it being just a larger mid-American industrial city with a primarily black-white demographic divide, but now the services sector is booming and the population has become more diverse and has a cosmopolitan feel that it just didn't have from the way I remember it.

So I'm not actually providing you with any stats, and this is purely anecdotal. But my opinion of Indianapolis, as well as the opinions of everyone around me that I grew up with, have vastly improved over the past 10 years since people shipping out for college in 2014. It's now an acceptable place to move as a young person and build a life, and not just some afterthought. The city, as well as the metro area, have grown strongly, even as Indiana as a whole has had below-average population growth.

I am far too lazy to look into the educational trends, but I would wager a pretty penny that part of the suburban swing left is driven by the increase by college-educated voters moving to the city and into the suburban areas. I think it would be interesting to see how the suburban parts of Indianapolis (outside the pre-1970 city limits) swung, since we can already see the surrounding counties' swings.

And perhaps the other posters who have a better pulse on Indiana politics can chime in here, but I always thought of the types of Republicans in the Indy suburbs to be similar to the WOW counties, in that they were establishment-friendly upper-middle class types, mixed between economically conservative professional types with some religious conservatives (but not necessarily evangelical). These are the types of people who have swung ever more away from Republicans under Trump and towards the Democratic Party, even in 2024. It looks like this could be seen in the gubernatorial races in 2016/2020 and 2024, where these voters voted solidly for Holcomb but were much less enthused about Braun. They also seem A-okay with Banks and Young at the Senate level. Maybe someone can break this down further by looking at the primaries.

At least Presidentially, both 2004 and 2012 were the best showings for Republican Presidential candidates since the 1980s in most of the surrounding counties.

TL;DR - probably generational turnover + increased population of college educated voters as Indy booms + existing predisposition to establishment conservatism and disdain for Trumpism.

So that's my two cents.