Dems Make Big Inroads In The Suburbs

Washington Post: Exit Polls Show Obama Got Bigger Share Of Suburban Voters Than Any Prior Democrat

(Washington Post)  This story was written by Alec MacGillis and Jon Cohen.

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After President Bush's reelection in 2004, top strategist Karl Rove proclaimed the arrival of a permanent Republican majority. Just four years later, the results from Sen. Barack Obama's definitive victory suggest that the opposite may be underway.

The Democrats appear to have built a majority across a wide, and expanding, share of the electorate -- young voters, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities, and highly educated whites in growing metropolitan areas. The Republicans appear at the moment to be marginalized, hanging on to a coalition that may shrink with time -- older, working-class and rural white voters, increasingly concentrated in the Deep South, the Great Plains and Appalachia.

Nothing demonstrates this reversal as clearly as the Democrats' ascendance in the suburbs and among the moderate, college-educated voters who dominate them. Obama won 50 percent of suburban voters, three points higher than Sen. John F. Kerry's showing in 2004 and the most by a Democrat since exit polling began in 1972, swelling his margins in a number of battleground states.

In Virginia, Obama offset losses in the rural parts of the state by not only winning Fairfax County, as Kerry did, but also the big outer suburbs of Prince William and Loudoun counties, home to many high-tech workers and government contractors. Obama visited Prince William County, which has been hit hard by the real estate bust, on the first day of his general-election campaign and the last, as well as in between. He also easily won the big Richmond suburb of Henrico County, a largely white community that Republicans had sewed up for years.

In Pennsylvania, Obama fared worse than Kerry in many steel towns around Pittsburgh. But he ran up such big margins in the formerly Republican suburbs of Philadelphia that he was able to run away with the state, by more than 10 points.

In Colorado, he gained 100,000 votes over Kerry in three big suburban counties outside Denver. In Ohio, he achieved a narrow majority in part by reducing the Republicans' margins of victory in the outer suburbs of Columbus and Cincinnati.

In Florida, he won partly by improving on Kerry's numbers among suburban voters in the Interstate 4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando and in Indiana and North Carolina, his showing with suburban voters improved by about 20 points in each state, far exceeding his gain among rural voters. Obama nearly carried the most iconic Republican suburb of all, Orange County in Southern California.

Estimates of turnout indicate that a record number of voters cast ballots this year. Final figures may not be available for weeks, in part because of unprecedented levels of early votes still to be tallied, but turnout is expected to be up around 10 percent over the previous record of about 122 million four years ago. The numbers were up in all eight states that officially switched from red to blue. In North Carolina, a potential ninth Bush state for Obama, nearly a million more voters cast ballots this year than in 2004.

Bush prevailed in 2004 because he combined his rural base with just enough votes from the suburbs. But the Democrats have steadily been expanding from their urban base for the past decade. It is a shift that points to how the parties' basic messages have changed, with Republicans increasingly employing cultural themes that resonate most in rural areas -- such as Gov. Sarah Palin's appeals to "pro-America" small towns -- while Democrats have focused on suburban concerns such as education.

"This has been growing for years, and this election was a new leap forward," said Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz (D), who represents suburban Philadelphia. Obama "was running a wave that came crashing down in the best way possible. Many of the suburban voters I represent see the Democrats as more open to ideas, more centrist, more pragmatic, not so rigidly ideological as the Republicans have become."

Some Republicans offer a similar diagnosis. "It is a problem for Republicans. As they continue to cater to their culturally conservative rural base, they continue to alienate educated voters," said Rep. Tom Davis, who is retiring and whose Fairfax County district was taken over by the Democrats on Tuesday. "The suburban vote is steadily slipping away, and the party's trying to ignore it and pretend it's not happening."

But the shift is also explained by the transformation of many suburbs as they become more developed and cosmopolitan. Suburbs are growing more diverse, which poses a challenge for a Republican Party that has seen a steep drop in its support among ethnic minorities, especially Hispanics, two-thirds of whom voted for Obama, up from 53 percent for Kerry. Prince William County, for instance, is on the verge of having a majority of minorities.

As crucial, exit polls from Tuesday's election show the Democrats sharply increasing their share of white, college-educated voters. Bush carried this group by 11 points, but Obama narrowed that deficit to four, continuing a trend away from the Republican Party by college-educated professionals that has been underway for at least a decade. Obama won white voters with post-graduate education by 10 points, up from a two-point margin for Kerry.

This shift went largely unnoted during much of the race, which focused instead on Obama's challenge in connecting with working-class "Reagan Democrats" in battleground states. Many Democrats worried that Obama would fare poorly with these voters after losing badly among them in the primaries against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the campaign of Sen. John McCain made an explicit bid to win them over.

The impact of these voters turned out to be far less than many had predicted. Some of the conservative Democrats who voted for Clinton in the primaries in states such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia voted for Bush in 2000 or 2004. So while McCain gained about a fifth of Clinton's voters in the Keystone State, higher than his rate nationally, he did not net that many new votes. In other places, such as Ohio's Mahoning Valley, Obama nearly matched Kerry's performance thanks in part to vigorous turnout efforts by union leaders.

The biggest region where McCain improved on Bush's numbers was the spine of Appalachia, running from Tennessee up to southwestern Pennsylvania, where he managed to flip some depressed steel counties. But these gains were in places that are, in many cases, losing population -- the electorate's share of white voters without a college education dropped by four percentage points this year, compared with 2004.

And McCain's gains were more than outweighed by his losses in growing metropolitan areas, suggesting that the story of the 2008 election was the Republicans' demographic weaknesses, not Obama's. In Pennsylvania, the southwestern counties of Washington, Fayette and Beaver gave McCain a net increase of 10,000 votes over Bush's 2004 performance, but he lost the Philadelphia suburb of Montgomery County by 41,000 more votes than Bush.

In Virginia, McCain slightly improved on Bush's performance in the rural southwest, but Prince William County alone gave Obama a 28,000 net gain over 2004.

[misha128-2009]

... That is called socialism ...

Posted by ken3331 at 01:47 PM

You are behind on the Republican talking points again. Karl Rove has proclaimed that Obama won because he ran a center or center-right campaign. Republicans are not using that "socialist" word anymore in comments about President-elect Obama. Being a Republican is really tough -- I cannot see why an election loss changes the opponents position from the far-left to the center or center-right. Sometime in the future the Republicans really need to explain how that works to the rest of us.

[lovegetpeace]

For the Republicans,

Before 2042, LEGAL Hispanics will become the Majority race because of High-Negative Birth rate among Anglo-Saxon Whites and High-Positive Birth rate among the LEGAL Hispanics in America.

Because the Republican Party been attempting to deport our Undocumented brothers and sisters and relatives, we will, with the help of our Black friends and Neighbors, make the Republican Party disappear without a Fight unless you folks are considerate of their dreams to live the American Dream just like your ancestors and you did.

Republicans have no way out because they cannot afford having offsprings.

[wogerwabbit]

Cry babies. As you told us in 2000, "Get over it!"

[pony1225]

Impeach Obama....STOPPA OBAMA!!!!!
Impeach Obama....STOPPA OBAMA!!!!!

[hatesthecolt]

Wake up and smell the coffee, while you can still afford it. HAHA



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Posted by ken3331

Keep saying it over and over and over again but it doesn''t make it true. Sorry you are feeling so marginalized, but the rest of us woke up from the Republican trickle down dream and realized they were just *** us over for their own benefit. If you are one of them, shame on you. If you are one of the trickle down believers at the lower end of the pay scale still waiting for that big fat promised trickle down payday, you are an idiot and I feel sorry for you.

[ken3331]

For those who are under the impression that 95% will not pay higher taxes you better read up.ONLY about 35% pay taxes in this country and those who make 100k or less will pay through the A-- under Obama. The tax will be given to those who don''''t pay taxes. That is called socialism- look it up.

More than half of this country is made of small businesses and those companies will have to pay higher taxes if Obama pushes for mandatory health insurance. They will not pay the highter tax, instead lay off workers.

Large companies will go overseas and the USA will faulter deeper into a recession.

Obama will try to overturn the 2nd Amdendment- The right to bear arms- OH, yes,this will not go over real well.

Obama wants to control freedom of speech, no more conservative radio. Sure, you libs would like that, but that is not only what you call real ''change'' that is called: " communistic change. "

Wake up and smell the coffee, while you can still afford it. HAHA

[ken3331]

INroads? You mean INBREDS, don''t you?

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has congratulated Barak Obama on his election win %u2014 the first time an Iranian leader has offered such wishes to a U.S. president-elect since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Ahmadinejad sent a message to Obama in which he congratulated the Democrat on "attracting the majority of voters in the election."

And so it begins...............