The titanic Biden-Trump election likely will be decided by roughly 6% of voters in just six states, top strategists in both parties tell us.
Each side will spend billions to reach those voters over the next six months…
In which states?
Zoom in: Both campaigns are obsessed with six states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
And which voters within these six states?
We perked up our ears when we heard a Biden insider use the “6% of six states” formulation as a proxy for how narrow a group of voters are considered truly in play — swing voters in swing states.
Republicans are making a similar calculation. A Trump insider told us that persuadable voters are below 10% in every battleground: “I think it’s probably 6% in Wisconsin but 8% in Michigan, and lower in Arizona.”
Given the way recent elections have gone regarding the importance of suburban voters, would a big proportion of those 6% live in suburbs? If so, these suburban voters can expect many appeals to come their direction from a variety of methods. Targeted ads online, TV and radio ads, mailers, campaign events, local gatherings, and door to door appeals. Lots of conversation about these voters and what they are thinking. Many media stories about them.
Does the average suburban voter in this 6% like that their vote matters or tire of lots of political attention?
But a POLITICO analysis shows there’s also a significant bloc of voters who did not want Trump in more exurban, red-leaning counties — the kinds of places that were skeptical of Trump in the 2016 GOP primary and, while largely voting for him in the 2016 and 2020 general elections, have remained somewhat resistant to his takeover of the Republican Party…
They’re farther away from urban areas. They’re less densely populated, and they have fewer voters with college degrees. These places — which include North Carolina’s Republican-leaning exurbs, and conservative but less Trump-inclined counties several hours north of Michigan’s major cities — still vote predominantly for Republicans, both at the presidential and local levels. In 2016, when both parties held contested primaries, the Republican voters in these counties backed candidates like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) over Trump, and in the general election they voted for Trump at lower rates than the deep-red rural areas.
Republicans are banking on the fact that partisanship usually wins out. This is far from the first contentious primary to leave bruised egos and hurt feelings, and usually the vast majority of voters come home to their party’s presidential nominee eventually. By Election Day, voters tend to return to their partisan camps.
The middle to outer suburbs have been a primary battleground in recent election cycles. Voters in big cities and suburbs close to big cities tend to vote Democratic and voters in rural areas and exurbs tend to vote Republican.
The analysis above seems to hinge on whether exurban voters are enthusiastic for Trump or not. Perhaps the more interesting question is whether some exburban areas are becoming more suburban. As suburban populations grow and more educated and wealthier voters move in, does this shift voting away from Republicans? Particularly in the South and West, metropolitan regions continue to expand and this could change voting patterns.
Former President Donald Trump on Friday proposed building up to 10 futuristic “freedom cities” on federal land, part of a plan that the 2024 presidential contender said would “create a new American future” in a country that has “lost its boldness.”…
He said he would launch a contest to charter up to 10 “freedom cities” roughly the size of Washington, DC, on undeveloped federal land.
“We’ll actually build new cities in our country again,” Trump said in the video. “These freedom cities will reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American dream.”
Trump’s plan, shared in advance with POLITICO, calls for holding a contest to design and create up to ten new “Freedom Cities,” built from the ground up on federal land. It proposes an investment in the development of vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles; the creation of “hives of industry” sparked by cutting off imports from China; and a population surge sparked by “baby bonuses” to encourage would-be-parents to get on with procreation. It is all, his team says, part of a larger nationwide beautification campaign meant to inspire forward-looking visions of America’s future.
When I saw that Trump mentioned this again, I immediately thought about free market cities that some have proposed for different parts of the world. But, that does not seem to be the goal here. Trump wants to build new cities that fit a new vision of American innovation. Freedom = innovation. One implication is that current cities are not free.
For such an idea, multiple practical obstacles exist:
Where would these be located? Which federal lands?
It is hard to build a new city. What is the timeline for this? How many resources will be involved? Will it be all private actors and developers doing the construction?
What will be the guiding mission of these cities? If the goal is innovation, what will be different about these cities compared to existing cities?
Tuesday’s electoral results show in miniature the national Republicans’ weakening grip on the suburbs. Come November, the race will also be a key post-midterms bellwether for both parties. Democrats made big gains in suburbs nationally in 2018 and 2020.
Nowhere else is that more apparent than Carmel. Slowly, this city has become more diverse and seen an influx of younger, more moderate voters who flock here for its award-winning school system, public art, affordability and culture (it’s home to a $126 million concert hall drawing national acts like the singer and songwriter Jason Isbell, and boasts more than 138 roundabouts, more than any other city in the U.S.). Students of the public school system speak 65 languages from 55 countries. Though many of its communities are gated, it’s not been walled-off from social change: Black Lives Matter marches snaked down the Monon Trail in Carmel amid $1 million townhouses and an upscale steakhouse in the summer of 2020…
Now, the Indiana Democratic Party is eyeing Carmel as a potential pickup this November. Mike Schmuhl, Pete Buttigieg’s former campaign manager and the state party chairman, is targeting this suburb in hopes of flipping it blue.
“The city has changed a lot,” Schmuhl said over lunch today at Fat Dan’s Chicago Deli in Carmel. “This used to be a rock-ribbed, Republican, conservative area but the Republican Party has changed a lot, too. So what you have up in Carmel is a lot of development, a lot of families, educated voters, hard working people, and the Democratic Party’s values appeal to those people.”
As someone who studies suburbs, four things I would note about Carmel that are relevant for this story:
It is regularly named a Best Place to Live in Money’s list.
It is right outside the combined Indianapolis-Marion County unigov arrangement. While that move was intended to help the city capture some suburban growth, Carmel sits right outs Marion County in neighboring Hamilton County.
The population growth since 1960 has been astounding as it had just less than 1,500 residents in the 1960 Census. The suburb has had more than 25% population growth every decade since then and now has just under 100,000 residents.
It has plenty of white-collar jobs due to corporate headquarters and offices.
The number of suburbs – or communities overall – that look like Carmel is small. At the same time, these larger suburbs have a higher status ad get more attention. As the political parties continue to fight over suburban voters, pundits will continue to look to growing and changing suburbs to see which ways the winds are blowing.
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