Interesting analysis of demographic changes in suburban and exurban areas and how the changes affect the parties.
Amy Walter:
“…In other words, Democrats can’t make up for losses in rural areas by winning ‘the suburbs.” Democrats also need to also perform better in suburbs that aren’t in — or around — big population centers. And, mid-size city suburbs also happen to be in states that have an outsized influence on the Electoral College.
Boston College’s David Hopkins lays it out clearly here: “Just as Democrats appear to be gaining in the largest Sun Belt population centers, for example, they must contend with clear signals of eroding popularity in smaller suburbs (and rural areas) in midwestern states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa: a trend that resulted in the party’s unexpected defeat in 2016. These countervailing developments have left Democrats locked in perennially close and bitter electoral competition with a Republican Party that has been able to defend, and even expand, its own suburban base surrounding the mid-size and small cities of the nation’s midsection—still the electoral backbone of red-state America.”…”