Political Miscalculation

Ruy Teixeira is worried that Democrats don’t “get” suburban voters by focusing on gun control and abortion:

The idea seems to be that the suburbs are full of liberal, highly-educated voters who are likely to be particularly moved by these issues and turn out against the Republicans. That may be true in some limited areas at the margins but it seems highly unlikely to work in the suburbs writ large for a very simple reason: actually-existing suburban voters are quite different from this caricature.

For one thing they don’t understand who lives in the suburbs:

Contrary to popular perception, less than a third of the suburban vote nationwide is made up of college-educated whites, the presumed locus of appeal for the suburban abortion/guns/very liberal on social issues vote. In fact, about three-fifths of suburban white voters are working class (noncollege).

and for another suburban voters aren’t particularly progressive:

Overall, according to Gallup, just 30 percent of adults with a four year degree only describe themselves as liberal and 36 percent of those with some postgraduate education (the less numerous group) do so. Putting this together with the data about suburban demographics, this implies that perhaps one-ninth (a third of a third) of suburban voters are white college-educated liberals. Perhaps the figure is a bit higher but I doubt that it’s much higher.

Aggravating the situation is that the position that Democrats are staking out on abortion is not aligned with that of suburban voters:

It is undeniably true that suburban voters are opposed to the overturning of Roe v. Wade but it is also true that they are open to significant limits on access to abortion—for example, suburban voters, by 53 percent to 41 percent, say they would favor a law in their state confining access to abortion (except in the case of medical emergency) to the first 15 weeks of a pregnancy. This suggests a contested playing field where Democrats’ ability to mobilize voters around the issue may be hindered by the party’s commitment to more or less unfettered access, which is not particularly popular.

Said another way the party leadership is taking positions much more extreme than those of the voters they most want to attract. Why?

I don’t think it’s so much that they’re trying to appeal to an electorate that doesn’t exist as Mr. Teixeira suggests. I think it’s a consequence of the drive to nationalize politics. It’s not that they don’t understand suburban voters. It’s that they don’t understand anybody who doesn’t live in the DC suburbs.