Suburban Voters #
Maybe I’m the only one who enjoys discussions about demographics and voting patterns, but I thought this was interesting:
America’s suburbs used to be bastions of Republicanism. No longer. Robert Lang of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, examined the voting behaviour of metropolitan counties and found that close-in suburbs now reliably vote for Democrats. That should be expected: as they become more urban, their residents care more about public transport, schools and other government-sponsored activities—and they attract more city types, often of a liberal bent, from the urban centres.
So emerging suburbs and exurbs, the farthest-out among them, are the new political battleground. George Bush poured resources into this urban fringe in 2004, says Mr Lang, running up larger margins there than when he lost the popular vote in 2000. The result was Mr Bush’s more impressive re-election.