[ad_1]
The 2020 US presidential elections are drawing to a close.
It has been difficult, close, and at times disconcertingly strange. But the wild shifts in a process that has had many of us glued to television screens and Twitter feeds is a reflection of the tectonic plate breaking of a society that continues to change and fascinate.
Elections can often change and moderate our perception of a country. They’re like the suspense at the end of a Netflix episode that prevents you from pressing the off button on your remote. They reveal more of the story.
The 2020 elections were one of those turning points.
Americans are on the move again and it’s having a huge impact on the nation’s politics.
The Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, has examined population changes recorded in the US census.
It found that after a brief hiatus during the Great Recession, when the subprime mortgage market imploded, the move from the so-called Snow Belt states in the north to the Sun Belt states in the south and west of the US.
This movement is generally from denser cities to suburbs or even more dispersed “exurbs.”
It found that from 2000 to 2017, the population in urban centers fell by half and the population in ex-urban counties quadrupled.
Counties surrounding Dallas in Texas, Phoenix in Arizona have seen their populations increase, while cities like Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and Youngstown in Ohio have seen their populations decrease.
The original American suburbs were Republican strongholds. Built after World War II, they continued to appeal to the aspiring and increasingly motorized middle classes well into the 1990s.
It was also part of Irish-American history. Suffolk County on Long Island in New York was and continues to be a Republican heartland represented for years by Irish-American Congressman Pete King.
He is now retired, but his seat has remained solidly Republican. The county also voted for Donald Trump, a thin red stripe in the shadow of Manhattan’s deep blue.
But the new suburbs and exurbs are different.
Of the many stories from this election cycle, the changing political tonality of states like Texas, Arizona, and Georgia has been one of the most fascinating.
It’s not just about the well-documented growing political influence of the Latino and Hispanic population.
In fact, if anything, the “demographic time bomb” narrative this represents for Republicans took some dents.
Exit polls showed roughly the same split among voters who identify as Latino or Hispanic as recorded in 2016: one-third Republican; two-thirds Democrats.
In fact, in Texas, more Latinos (40%) voted for Donald Trump than the national average.
In Florida, the traditional Cuban-American affinity with Republicans is credited with supporting Donald Trump among Latinos and Hispanics with 47%.
No, the riddle of the dilution of the deep red southern and southwestern states does not lie in race. It is found in geography.
The migration to the Sun Belt has brought with it a more liberal population. It is a political group that began to emerge during the Clinton years.
It was accentuated by the culture wars of that time and the Bush years. The more socially liberal voters began to identify with the Democrats in parallel with minorities.
He has presented a blessing and a problem for the Democrats.
According to Boston College Professor David Hopkins, who has written extensively on geography and politics in the US, only 9% of Hillary Clinton’s voters came from outside metropolitan areas in 2016.
It’s too early to say what that percentage was this time, but click those states backwards into the spotlight right now and look at the blue squares around cities like Atlanta and Houston surrounded by solid blocks of red.
All of this is good for the Democrats as long as these thriving cities continue to grow. But it still doesn’t answer a more fundamental question for a party that was once synonymous with unionized manual workers, concentrated in the north.
What does it offer voters whose jobs and prospects have slumped?
As the politics of recent years has shown, many voters in parts of the North and Midwest that once industrialized believed that Donald Trump’s Republican Party was more in tune with their concerns.
The proximity of the 2020 race in these states and Trump’s victory in Ohio shows that many still do.
It is a question that is important not only for the economic well-being of the people who live here, but to avoid the increase of social unrest, anger and resentment. It is also a challenge on our side of the Atlantic, even after the Covid-19 damage wears off.
And despite the fascinating changes in the sunny South and Southwest, this is where American elections are still being fought and won.
Robert Shortt is RTÉ’s economic correspondent and was a Washington correspondent from 2004 to 2008.
[ad_2]