The Power Of Suburban Voters

WAMU 88.5

Published January 2, 2019 at 10:18 AM EST

Voters arrive at a polling place to cast a ballot on August 7, 2018 in Columbus, Ohio. Voters in Ohio's 12th Congressional District are choosing between Democrat Danny O'Connor and Republican Troy Balderson for Congress in a special election.

Suburban voters took on a new resonance in the 2018 midterm elections — as one of the main voting blocs pushing back on President Trump.

Republican candidates and incumbents for suburban districts across the country took on huge losses in November.

The Washington Post‘s Dan Balz reported that “[i]f the enthusiasm for Trump in rural and small-town America constituted the story after 2016, the revolt against him in the suburbs, led by female voters, has become the story of the 2018 elections.”

So what do these voters care about? Vox reports that they definitely aren’t keen on President Trump. But like every other voting demographic, they have a host of other concerns as well.

Suburban voters have a discrete set of economic concerns — which congressional Republicans by and large ignored. They fret about rising health care costs, either for themselves or for their aging parents, or both. They want good schools and for their children to be able to afford to go to college. They worry about the job prospects for their kids when they graduate. They are wary of extremism of any kind.

What are politicians doing to reach these suburban voters? How did these voters get politically active? Are these voters lost to Republicans forever?

GUESTS

Michael Mulcahy, Political editor, Minnesota Public Radio; @mprsmikemulcahy

Andrew Schneider, Politics and government reporter, Houston Public Media; @aschneider_hpm

Lily Geismer, Associate professor of History, Claremont McKenna College and author of, ‘Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party’.

For more, visit https://the1a.org.