Trump’s suburban collapse and the widening ‘gender chasm’

Remember when all we ever heard about were former Democrats who defected to vote for Donald Trump in 2016? Would they really stick with Trump? Could Democrats ever win them back? Political reporters spent a solid three years perseverating over nothing but disaffected Democrats who might be permanently wed to the GOP moving forward.

Well, good news—political reporters are now looking elsewhere for their dog-bites-man electoral stories. The new shiny objects of 2020 are the once reliably pro-Republican suburbs turning on Trump. As we saw in the 2018 midterms, if enough college-educated GOP voters run toward Democrats, they can neutralize and, in some critical states, more than offset non-college white Democrats who gravitated toward Trump in 2016.

But following Democrats’ historic rout in the midterms—largely due to white college-educated voters abandoning GOP candidates—analysts questioned whether what we were seeing was a momentary blip intended to send a message or a more permanent realignment of the voting bloc with Democrats. Now, just months before Election Day, all available qualitative and quantitative evidence suggests white college-educated voters are sticking with Democrats for the foreseeable future. Continue reading.