Suburban Voting in Presidential Elections

Suburban Voting in Presidential Elections

SETH C. MCKEE DARON R. SHAW

Universi& of Texas at Austin

Two obseruations have gained widespread acceptance in the wakt ofthe 2OOOpresidential election. First, America has become a “49percent nation,” in which it will be dificult for either the Republicans or the Democrats to wrest much ofan advantage, either in congressionalorpresidential elections. Second, in this uhacompetitive environment, nationalelections will be decided in the sub urbs. This article examines the dynamics of suburban voting payingparticular attention to movement away fiom Republican presidential candidates in the 1990s. The authors consider the argument that the sh$ in politicalpreferences ofsuburban voters was driven by changes in northern but not southern suburbs. Thg also investigate the notion that changes in the suburbs are due to demographic sh$s favorable to Democratic candidates. Surug data &onstrate that the lppothe- sized changes have occurred but that thy are neither reg ion4 localized nor athibrrtable so& to demographic sh@

Keywortis: voting; elections; suburban; parties; region

This article examines the conventional wisdom that suburban voting patterns became increasingly favorable for Democratic presidential candidates fiom 1992 to 2000. Its genesis can be traced to a round table discussion of the congressional elections that aired on C- SPAN in early January 2002. Charlie Cook, one of the most astute observers of American politics working today, suggested that the balance of power in the Congress would be deter- mined by the preferences ofvoters in a handful of“col1ar counties”-counties that ring major urban counties such as Wayne (Detroit), Cuyahoga (Cleveland), and Cook (Chicago). Pre- sumably, Cook made this claim because (1) a disproportionate number of competitive House seats are situated in and across these collar counties, (2) a high percentage of competitive Senate races occur in states with important collar counties (e.g., Missouri, New Jersey, Texas), and (3) collar counties tend to have a greater than average share of “persuadable” or swing voters. Cook went on to make two additional provocative points. First, he stated that the suburban vote did not revert back to its historically Republican proclivity for the 2000

Seth C. McKce is a hctoralstudntt in ihe Govemment Department at the Univcrsig O/Taas at Austin, speciduingin

Daron R. Shaw is associate professor ofgovernment at the Univcrsi& of Texas at Austin, specializing in election cam-

souihem politics, public opinion and voting behavim andpolitidpartictpation.

paigns, public opinion and voting behavior, andpoliticalparties.

Presiahtial Stwdips Quarterly 33, no. 1 (March) DOI: 10. I 177/0360491802250544 Q 2003 Cettter for the Study ofthe Presidency

125

126 I PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / March 2003

presidential election. This implies that whatever changes occurred during the 1990s were more than simply a reaction to the charismatic appeal of Bill Clinton. Second, and perhaps even more interesting, he posited that changes in suburban voting patterns mask strong differences between northern and southern suburbs.’ That is, Democratic gains in the suburbs are largely driven by changes in northern suburban counties.

Cook is not alone in his assessment of the power of suburban voters. In his influential essay “The 49% Nation,” Michael Barone (2001) points out that the Democrats have made almost all of their post-1988 gains in the top twenty-three major metro areas and have done especially well in the top seven. Although it is left unsaid, it is difficult to imagine that the suburban reaches of these metropoles have not been responsible for the lion’s share of these shifts. But while Barone distinguishes between peripheral areas of the North and South, he does not offer (as Cook does) a regional distinction when considering the political behavior of suburbanites.

All of this underscores the reality that while we may have suspicions about the interac- tive role of region and residential location, we have little by way of empirical analysis. This article addresses this gap in several important ways. Initially, we offer a brief overview of the existing literature on the influence of residential locale on voting behavior. We then propose a set of hypotheses about the dynamics of presidential candidate preference over the past decade and the reasons for the 2000 presidential vote distribution. Aggregate and individual- level survey data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) and network exit polls are introduced to test these hypotheses, including the particular notion that there are regional differences in suburban voting tendencies. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of the analysis for 2000 and subsequent elections.

What We Know (and Don’t Know) about Suburban Voting

The importance of suburban voters to many state and national elections became an article offaith in the late 1980s. The logic behind this assumption is fairly simple. Voters living in urban areas tend to be disproportionately African American or Hispanic or less affluent and therefore more likely to identify with the Democratic Party. At the other end of the spectrum, rural voters are more likely to be white, southern, and religiously observant and therefore more likely to identify with the Republican Party.’ In contrast, by 1990 the suburbs of major metropolitan areas contained something like a representative cross section of the American public: predominantly (but not overwhelmingly) white, only slightly more educated, affluent, and more likely to be married than the rest of the nation, and balanced in terms of gender and age. As the post-New Deal party system continues to move toward a

1. For present purposes, “northern” is synonymous with “non-South.” 2. Both ofthese tendencies are just that-tendencies. Many urban voters are white and affluent and as such

represent appealing targets for Republican candidates (especially on economic grounds). Conversely, many rural voters are less affluent and tend to be receptive to the populist, anti-Wall Street streak that has often marked the Democratic Party.

McKee, Shaw / SUBURBAN VOTING I 127

fifty-fifty equilibrium, pundits and scholars agree that elections in large, diverse states-as well as national elections-are significantly influenced by the balance of power in the suburbs.

Two additional tacit assumptions are in play here. The first is that the suburbs used to be a bastion of Republicanism. The historical demography of the suburbs-more affluent, less ethnically diverse-is at the heart of this belief. Lurking in the background, however, is a related belief that the attitudes that motivate one to live in the suburbs-discomfort with the crowds, traffic, crime, and general hurly-burly that have come to characterize urban living since the 1960s-also predispose one to be sympathetic to Republican candidates and policy positions.

The second assumption is that the presumed Republican stranglehold o n the suburban vote has loosened considerably. This assumption is fueled by the perception that the suburbs have begun to diversify, both demographically and politically. The suburbs have, under this line of reasoning, become more heterogeneous as a new wave of voters-more liberal, more ethnically diverse-has left the urban core.

It is also fueled by the perception that the Republicans have swung to the right since 1990, while the Democrats-and Bill Clinton, in particular-have moved to the center. More specifically, the rash of attention given to the ((gender gap” and “soccer moms” demonstrates that observers believe Democratic candidates have taken advantage of their traditional positions favoring greater spending on education and health care while moving to the political middle o n issues such as crime and taxes.

Interestingly, although political pundits have chimed in repeatedly on suburban voters, few political scientists have focused on the nature and significance of residential locale. For example:

In the classic study Voting, Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee (1954) focus on the single “independent” city ofElmira, New York, and are thus unable to consider the relative impact ofresi- dential location. In The American Voter, Campbell et al. (1960) consider the effects of suburbanization but do so indirectly. They state,

One favorite theme has held that this change in residence (from metropolitan centers to suburbia) is an indicator of upward social mobility and has been accompanied by a change in politics that has seen Democrats turn into Republicans. We shall not attempt to verify or deny this thesis. . . . We will, however, move directly to a confrontation of the hypothesis that upward social mobility, outward geographical mobility away from the metropolitan center, and a turn away from Democracy to Republicanism are interrelated. (Pp. 455-56)

Notably, they conclude that the movement to the suburbs after the Second World War was not solely, or even largely, responsible for aggregate changes in partisanship and voting behavior. Furthermore, they find that upward mobility does not necessarily promote Repub- licanism and that changes in the preferences ofurban dwellers during the 1950s are at least on par with those among suburbanites (pp. 457-60). In Soztbern Politics, V. 0. Key (1996) focuses on political differences between urban dwellers and those from the periphery, pointing out that representatives from urban districts in the South were far and away the most likely to break ranks and vote with their northern counterparts on congressional legislation. But the relevant referent group here is the rural, agrarian


populist, not the suburban homeowner. Indeed, Key makes no mention of a suburbanlurban cleavage in his analysis. The seminal works ofthe past two decades are also relatively silent on the nature and significance of residential patterns. For example, neither the nuts-and-bolts accounts ofAbramson, Aldrich, and Rohde’s (2002) ChungeundContinuiErvolumes nor Fiorina’s (198 1) spirited articulation and defense of the theory of retrospective voting bother to consider the urbadsubur- badrural divides.

This is not to single out specific works or authors as somehow lax for not incorporating a variable that we happen to find intriguing as part of their analyses. Indeed, as we posited earlier, much of the rationale for examining suburban voting draws on developments from 1988 to 2000. Moreover, there have been a few important empirical analyses focused squarely on the topic of residential effects on political behavior.

Juliet Gainsborough (2001) finds empirical support for a distinctive suburban politics. She uses the ANES cumulative file from 1952 to 1992 to measure the impact of living in a suburb on party identification, vote choice (presidential and congressional races), and policy preferences. After controlling for education, income, gender, race, region, and religion, she finds that compared to residents living in cities, suburbanites are significantly more likely to identify with the Republican Party.

Similarly, she finds that suburban voters also preferred Republican candidates in presidential and congressional races. Including the same control variables from the party identification model, suburban voters favored the Republican Party in congressional contests throughout the time series. This inclination even holds in the study‘s final two on-year elections; in 1988 and 1992, suburbanites were significantly more inclined to vote Republican compared to their city counterparts. The findings for presidential vote choice are slightly different. From 1952 to 1992, there is no statistical support for a difference in vote choice between city and suburban residents. For the 1980 and 1984 elections, however, suburban voters are more likely to vote Republican even if party identification is included in the model.3

Gainsborough also finds strong evidence that suburbanites are less likely to be supportive of spending that disproportionately benefits city residents, although she confines her analysis to 1988 and 1992.4 In these elections, suburbanites are substantially less likely than city dwellers to favor increases in spending for a host of programs that primarily aid the latter.

Gainsborough’s preferred explanation for why place affects political behavior is that suburbia has become increasingly more independent of neighboring cities. Since the 1980s, a distinctive suburban politics has emerged because suburbanites are no longer reliant on the city for services. As a consequence, they are politically resistant to both paying for social programs and supporting candidates who favor programs that do not benefit suburbanites

3. We ran a similar model (we include a dummy for union household, marital status, and rural residence) adding the 1988 election and also found that suburban voters in the 1980s were significantly more likely than city residents to vote Republican (p < ,042).

4. Gainsborough (2001) includes the following spending topics as dependent variables: support for aid to cities (1992), spending on programs to assist blacks (1988-92), government spending and services (1988-92), spending on food stamps (1988-92), and spending on social security (1988-92).


(Schneider 1992).’ They prefer political and legal separation from the city because it allows for greater economic efficiency through the privatization of services (Edsall and Edsalll992; Schneider 1992). Ultimately, Gainsborough agrees with the normative implication put forth by many scholars who claim that the isolation and racial segregation so prevalent in the suburbs enable suburbanites to ignore the needs of less fortunate city residents (Oliver 2001; Reich 1987).

In sharp contrast to the findings of Gainsborough, Teixeira and Rogers (2000) dismiss the argument for a distinctive suburban politics. Based on their research, place is not important because it is not suburban voters per se who decide elections; rather, it is the white working class (the so-called “forgotten majority”) who determine the outcome ofpresidential and congressional elections. These voters compose about 55 percent of the full electorate and constitute a majority of the suburban and nonsuburban electorates. And according to Teixeira and Rogers,

The forgotten majority voters in the suburbs are the “suburban swing” in the literal sense that they are the suburban voters who swung the most from election to election in the 1990s. That is, across the board, working-class and low- to moderate-income whites in the suburbs have been far more volatile than their college-educated and affluent counterparts. (I?. 142)

Teixeira and Rogers (2000) acknowledge that suburban voters decide elections, but they contend that the political behavior of suburbanites is commensurable with rural voters. They claim that from 1960 to 1996, the bulk of suburban growth has come at the expense of rural areas and that it therefore makes sense that suburban and rural voters are not significantly different. According to Teixeira and Rogers, T h e move from rural areas to suburbs would cancel out any ‘suburbanization’ effect, since rural and suburban voters tend to act similarly, particularly once we factor in . . . race, education, and income” (p. 26). They conclude, “Suburbanization, by itself, has very little to do with the changed political climate we live in today” (p. 26).

Clearly, the findings of Gainsborough and Teixeira and Rogers are contradictory. Whereas Teixeira and Rogers find that suburbs draw their populations from rural areas, Gainsborough (2001) writes that “it is fiom urban areas that suburbs draw their population” (p. 55). On one hand, Gainsborough argues that place matteq6 making the case that “it is the suburbs’ relationship to nearby urban areas that interests most observers of suburbs” (p. 55).7

5. Political commentator William Schneider (1992) contends that what primarily distinguishes suburban voters from the rest of the electorate is that most are homeowners and taxpayers (making them more favorable to spending on public works that benefit their communities and, by contrast, averse to spending on social programs that benefit others).

6. On the question of causality, Gainsborough (2001) acknowledges that her research does not deal with the issue ofwhether living in a suburb results in political behavior distinct from cities or people “self-select into suburbs” with political positions different from city residents (p. 57).

7. It is important to point out that Gainsborough (2001) excludes rural respondents from her analyses. It is also worth stating that, broadly speaking, we agree with Gainsborough and think that scholars of urban politics are correct in focusing on comparisons between suburbs and cities. In particular, while we recognize the growing diversity of suburbs (Frey2001; Glaeser and Vigdor 2001), we think the suburbs remain distinct enough from cities to be worthy of comparison. Some scholars disagree with this perspective. For instance, exit poll data have typically sup- ported the contention of Teixeira and Rogers (2000) with respect to the rough equivalency of vote choice between suburban and rural voters. Suburban voters, however, were no longer indistinguishable from rural voters in 2000. In


O n the other hand, Teixeira and Rogers contend that the movement ofwhite working-class voters (from rural residences to the suburbs) has changed politics without altering the attitudes of this critical group. In other words, Teixeira and Rogers directly confront Gainsborough by positing that the suburbs are only important because the white working class composes a majority of its residents.

All of this presumes, of course, that suburban voting patterns have changed over the past decade or so. It is to this subject that our attention now turns. In particular, two main questions (along with a number of smaller attendant ones) emerge in light of the presumed changes in-and increased competitiveness of-suburban presidential voting tendencies. First, is this competitiveness real or simply imagined? To what extent have we moved away from Grand Old Party (GOP) dominance among suburban voters? How did this play out in 2000? Second, what is the cause ofthis change? Is it the result of demographic changes in the suburbs, or have voters moved in response to policy positions and perceptions of the parties and their candidates?

Hypotheses

We offer several hypotheses that guide the more general consideration of suburban voting. The first of these is a straightforward articulation of the general premise animating much of the discussion surrounding the 2000 election:

Hypothesis 1: Suburban voters moved from a core Republican constituency to a highly competitive group during the 1990s.

This change should be particularly manifest in presidential voting patterns, although it might also be apparent in congressional voting and party identification. If understood as a true shift in aggregate predispositions, there is no reason to think that these patterns ought to have been reversed in 2000, even though Bill Clinton was not on the ballot. The expectation, therefore, is that suburban voting patterns are dynamic but that the recent trend should hold for 2000.

Hypothesis 2: Suburban voters in northern states were disproportionately responsible for this shift.

fact, the 2000 exit polls show a large increase in Republican support among rural voters compared to 1996, whereas suburban voters maintained essentially the same level of support for both major party candidates in the 2000 election that they had in 1996 (Ceaser and Busch 2001; romper 2001; Sabato 2002). A study in 7h N m York Emes presents the following breakdown for two-party vote choice based on exit poll data for suburban and rural voters in the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections:

1996 2000

Percentage of Total Vote Clinton Dole Gore Bush

Suburbs 47 42 47 49 Rural areas 44 46 37 59

Source: Adapted from Connelly (2000).


This introduces the concept of region into the explanation of suburban voting changes. Put another way, it is possible that suburban Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston are still heavily Republican, while suburban Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Philadelphia have become competitive or even marginally Democratic? There are two reasons to expect support for this hypothesis. First, the state and local context is far less favorable to the Demo- crats in the South. Second, the distinctiveness of the suburban voter-especially with respect to ethnicity and status-is eroding more rapidly in the North than in the South. Ultimately, this hypothesis may require a more subtle regional distinction than the simple “North- South” dichotomy, as other nonsouthern suburbs (especially those in the Sun Belt, such as Phoenix and Las Vegas) may fit more comfortably with their southern brethren.

Hypothesis 3: Movement toward Democratic positions and candidates was driven by the relocation of many minority and white, liberal, urban residents to the suburbs.

This hypothesis focuses on a demographic explanation for changes in suburban voting patterns. It is underpinned by the notion that during the 1980s and 1990s, ethnic minorities and white liberals began to leave urban areas, presumably attracted to the suburbs in equal part by more affordable housing and better public schools. The increased heterogeneity of the suburbs increased support for Democratic candidates.

As discussed earlier, the alternative hypothesis explaining recent Democratic success is the Republican lurch to the right. That is, the increasingly conservative posture of the GOP- begun under Ronald Reagan and perhaps brought to its logical conclusion by Newt Gingrich-has turned off suburban voters and cost the GOP its advantage in suburbia. While we believe that both explanations are worlung in conjunction with each other, the demographic explanation is simpler, and more economical, and therefore merits more immediate attention.’

Data and Design

We rely primarily on the ANES cumulative file, 1952 to 2000 (N= more than thirteen thousand voters) for our analyses-especially our multivariate analyses-of suburban voters in presidential elections. Although we are interested in party identification and nonpresidential voting, we focus on presidential voting as the bellwether indicator for these other attitudes and behaviors. In addition to ANES, we also use exit polls from the 1980 through the 1996 elections to track the vote share for Republican and Democratic presidential candidates according to the residential location of voters.

For the ANES data, we identify suburban voters according to the “urbanism” variable (in the cumulative data file). This variable partitions respondents according to whether they reside in (1) central cities, (2) suburbs, or (3) rural, small towns. For the exit poll data, there is

8. The argument that suburban voters have been “turned off by the Grand Old Party requires time-series (and perhaps even panel) data, while holding constant the demographic characteristics of suburban voters.


also an urbanity variable that has a suburban category, a rural category, and several city categories based on population size.

We are aware that many scholars of urban politics have emphasized the importance of refining definitions of urbanity, especially suburban areas because of their increasing diversity (see Lucy and Phillips 2001; Oliver 2001). Despite a growing literature that makes finer distinctions among suburban areas (i.e., inner suburbs, outer suburbs, exurbs, edge cities, etc.), we think that the suburban category offered in the survey data is sufficient for our analyses ofpresidential vote choice. We agree with Gainsborough (2001), who contends that it is correct “to use the term szcbzcrb as though it has some meaning-at least as much meaning as the term city” (p. 47).

With regard to region, we classifjr respondents according to whether they live in the South, defined as the eleven states ofthe former Confederacy, or the North (non-South), all other states.’ For the ANES data, several election years had voter validation studies (1964, 1976,1980,1984, and 1988), but for the sake ofconsistency, our examination ofpresidential vote choice is based on respondent self-reports of voting.

Findings

In examining the three hypotheses articulated above, we present both descriptive and multivariate analyses. As is often the case, we find that the descriptive data ought not to be given short shrift; they tell a story well worth noting.

The End of Republican Dominance of the Suburbs

Table 1 presents avariety ofdata on suburban voting from 1952 to 2000. In the top two sets ofrows, we see the relative proportion ofurban, rural, and suburban dwellers in the overall population and the presidential electorate. As might be expected, the suburban share of the total population and (more particularly) the total electorate has increased dramatically since 1976. With respect to the presidential electorate, the suburban share of the vote has climbed from 33 percent in 1952 to 37 percent in 1976 to 42 percent in 2000. By contrast, the urban share of the vote has dropped only slightly (from 32 percent in 1952 to 28 percent in ZOOO), while the rural share of the vote has declined from a high of 50 percent in 1960 to 30 percent in 2000.

As for the aggregate presidential preferences of suburban voters, our first hypothesis receives considerable support from Table 1. More specifically, it is clear that both suburban and rural voters are more Republican than their urban counterparts but that the overall tendency for suburbanites to vote for Republican presidential candidates has declined since the Reagan elections. The data show that the Democratic share of the two-party suburban vote topped 50 percent only once between 1952 and 1988, and that was in Lyndon Johnson’s landslide election of 1964. The urban Democratic vote, by contrast, is much higher, dipping

9. The eleven southern states are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.


TABLE 1 Changes in Suburban Voting, 1952-2000

1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000

Residential patterns Urban 32 25 23 30 27 26 28 28 23 24 25 27 29 Rural 38 49 51 49 44 43 37 33 35 33 33 34 30 Suburban 30 26 26 31 30 31 35 40 42 43 43 40 40

Composition of electorate

Urban 32 25 22 29 26 25 27 28 23 24 25 26 28 Rural 35 47 50 39 42 41 37 33 33 31 30 31 30 Suburban 33 28 27 32 31 34 37 39 44 46 45 43 42

Presidential vote (Democrat share of two-party vote)

Nationalaverage 42 40 49 68 46 36 51 44 42 47 59 58 52 Urban 50 45 63 71 59 50 57 62 60 62 71 67 71 Rural 39 40 45 66 40 30 49 38 39 43 51 57 46 Suburban 39 40 45 64 45 30 49 36 35 41 53 54 50

Deviation from national average

Urban 8 5 14 3 13 14 6 18 18 15 12 9 19

Suburban -3 0 -4 -4 -1 -6 -2 -8 -7 -6 -6 -4 -2 Rural -3 0 -4 -2 -6 -6 -2 -6 -3 -4 -8 -1 -6

Suburban vote by region Northern 38 36 48 65 48 32 49 38 38 41 55 54 52 Southern 42 48 38 42 50 21 60 34 29 43 53 50 44 Northern suburb deviation from

Southern suburb deviation from average 0 8 -11 -26 4 -15 9 -10 -13 -4 -6 -8 -8

average -4 -4 -1 -3 2 -4 -2 -6 -4 -6 -4 -4 0

Northern - southern average -4 -12 10 23 -2 11 -11 4 9 -2 2 4 8

below 50 percent only in the Eisenhower blow-out of 1956. From 1992 to 2000, however, suburbanites favored the Democrats with 53 percent, 54 percent, and 50 percent of their votes, respectively.

The changing tendencies of suburban voters are further demonstrated in a slightly different way in the fourth set of rows in Table 1-by plotting deviation from the overall Demo- cratic share of the two-party presidential vote from 1952 to 2000 (also see Figure 1). From 1952 to 1980, the Democrats’ share of the suburban vote is consistently below their national average, with variation marked by the absence of any discernible pattern. Notice, however, that suburban support for Democratic presidential candidates increases consistently from 1980 to 2000 (as compared with the national vote for the Democrat), even as Republican


candidates amass substantial victories in the three elections from 1980 to 1988." Again, all of this supports the first hypothesis.

Logistic regression analyses of presidential voting-modeling the vote between 1952 and 2000, as well as separately modeling 1980 through 1988 and 1992 through 2000- provide additional evidence that suburbia used to vote Republican but has become much more competitive since 1988. The models (Tables 2,4, and 5) rely on a wide range of factors to predict voting for the Democratic presidential candidate, including a dummy variable for whether the respondent lives in the suburbs.

Our variable of interest is residential location, and we include dummies for suburban (1 = suburb, 0 = otherwise) and rural (1 = rural, 0 = otherwise) to compare against the excluded city variable (1 = city, 0 =otherwise). To get a sense of the independent effect of residential location on presidential vote choice, we have included the following control variables in our models: region (1 = South, 0 = non-South), party identification, race (1 = African American, 0 = white), education (seven categories of maximum educational attain- ment, ranging from eighth grade or less to graduate degree), union status (1 = union member in household, 0 = otherwise), religion, age (in years, eighteen through oldest), gender (1 =

female, O=male), marital status (1 =married, 0 = otherwise), and family income (five categories coded in percentile intervals, e.g., lowest income category is between zero and sixteenth percentile of the income distribution). For party identification, we include independent leaners among our Democratic and Republican dummies, and thus the omitted category against which these variables are compared is pure independents. For religion, we include dummies for Catholics (1 = Catholic, 0 = otherwise) and Jews (1 =Jewish, 0 = otherwise), to be measured against the reference category ofProtestants, others, and those with no religious preferences.

Table 2 shows that the suburban coefficient for the overall (1952-2000) model is negative and significant at the .05 level, indicating a pro-Republican tendency. This relationship holds even with the post-1988 shift and even controlling for party identification, region, race, religion, education, income, and gender.

The separate models demonstrate that the propensity for suburbanites to vote Repub- lican is strongest from 1980 to 1988. The coefficient for suburban residents is highly significant with a p value equal to .001. What's more, the magnitude of the suburban dummy eclipses that for the rural dummy over this time period, providing support for Gainsborough over Teixeira and Rogers. For the model of presidential voting from 1992 to 2000, the sign associated with the suburban dummy reverses (to pro-Democratic) and falls to statistical insignificance. The multivariate analysis thus reinforces the impression from Table 1 ; suburban voters have become marginally Democratic in presidential elections.

Are Northern Suburban Voters Driving Changes in Aggregate Voting Patterns?

Given that the expected decline in the suburban Republican vote occurs, is there any evidence for the second hypothesis, which posits that this change is concentrated outside the

10. In 2000, suburbanites split their ballots between Bush and Gore fifty-fifty. This fact suggests an end of Republican dominance in the suburbs and that the competitiveness the Democrats showed in 1992 and 1996 was not simply a Clinton phenomenon. We will explore this in detail later.


TABLE 2 Logistic Regression Models of Presidential Voting

I952 to 2000 1980to 1988 1992 to 2000

Dependenr Variublz' Coeflcient SE Coeficient SE Coe-cient SE

Residential location Suburban Rural

Region South

Party identification Democratic Republican

African American

Less than high school

Race

Education

through postgraduate Union status

Union household Religion

Catholic Jewish

18 and older Gender

Female Marital status

Married Family income (percentile) Constant

Age

-0.135** .063 -0.133** .064

-0.484*"** ,145 -0.314** ,156

0.017 .149 -0.205 ,517

-0.438**** ,060 -0.487**** ,135 -0.044 .I35

1.768**** .075 -1.536**** .084

2.013**** ,170 -1.564**** ,193

1.983**** .179 -1.577**** .190

2.103**** .122 2.266**** .285

0.020 ,015 0.021 ,037 0.079** ,039

0.330**** .057 0.604**** .130 0.213 .145

0.143*** .056 1.294**** .159

-0.016 .128 0.447 .333

0.005 .128 1.165*** .419

0.001 .002 0.007** .003 0.009*** .003

0.101** ,048 0.219*" .lo9 0.305*** .I 13

-0.125** ,058 -0.104**** ,027 -0.509**** .157

0.014 ,122 -0.144** .063 -0.879** .361

-0.417**** ,129 -0.080 .066 -1.021*** ,372

13,282 6,845****

.373

2,928 1,722****

,432

2,714 1,665****

.443

n Log ratio x2 Pseudo R2

Source: National Election Study cumulative file, 1952 to 2000. a. The dependent variable is 1 for Democratic presidential vote and 0 for Republican or major third party candidate (Wallace in 1968, Anderson in 1980, and Perot in 1992 and 1996). "*p < .05, two-tailed. ***p .01, two-tailed. ****p 2 ,001, two-tailed.

South? The final set of rows in Table 1 isolates southern and nonsouthern voters. Immedi- ately, we see that regional differences have existed in the past. Southerners were more supportive of Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, and Jimmy Carter (at least in 1976), while nonsoutherners were more supportive of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter (in 1980), and Walter Mondale (also see Figure 2).

More recently, there were virtually no differences between northern and southern suburban voters in 1988 or 1992, but in 1996 southerners began to move back to the Republican Party. In that election, Clinton won 54 percent of the vote in the northern suburbs but only


3 0

5 2 -10 Ei 8 s' E ml0

30

-50 ' Election Year

Urban

-A- Suburban

FIGURE 1. Residential Voting Patterns, 1952-2000.

50 percent in the southern suburbs. The split continued in 2000, as A1 Gore won 52 percent of the northern suburban vote but won only 44 percent of the southern suburban vote.

It is, of course, always desirable to confirm findings with multiple data sources. It is particularly desirable in this case, as the ANES does not have an especially large number of southern suburban respondents for any given election year survey. Table 3 compares the voting behavior ofcity and suburban voters based on exit poll data from 1980 to 1996. We also separate southern and nonsouthern suburbanites to test the hypothesis of relatively greater electoral support for Republican candidates among southern voters.

The exit poll data corroborate the findings in Table 1. Keeping in mind that a positive margin means voters favored the Republican candidate, we see that the large vote margin for the Republican nominee among suburbanites disappears and actually becomes a deficit in the last two elections. Although the decline in suburban support for Republican presidential candidates takes place irrespective of region, the rate of decline is actually greater for southern suburbanites. Southern suburban voters favored Reagan in 1984 and Bush in 1988 by an average of28 points, but the average margin for Bush in 1992 and Dole in 1996 was only 4 points, producing a drop of 24 points. Among nonsouthern suburban voters, the decline was 21 points (+15 to -6)."

Multivariate analyses of the ANES cumulative data provide higher level tests of hypothesis 2, as well as the more general claim that residential location matters. Table 4

11. It is also worth noting that among city voters, the Democratic advantage has grown considerably over time (seventeen-point margin in 1980 versus a forty-three-point margin in 1996). Furthermore, this favorable Dem- ocratic margin is much larger for nonsouthern city voters. In 1996, for example, nonsouthem city dwellers favored Clinton over Dole by forty-seven points, a margin thirty points greater than their southern counterparts.


-50 ’ Election Year

Average - Southern Suburb Deviation from

FIGURE 2. Suburban Vote by Region, 1952-2000.

examines regional and residential factors on presidential vote choice for 1980 to 1988 and 1992 to 2000. In the 1980s, irrespective ofregion, suburbanites were significantly more likely to vote Republican compared to residents living in cities. The disparity in vote choice between suburban and city voters is, however, substantially more pronounced among southern suburbanites. Holding all covariates at their mean values, northern suburban voters are 10 percent more likely to vote Republican than northern city voters (70 percent vs. 60 percent). By contrast, the margin is much wider among southerners, with suburban voters 35 percent more likely to vote Republican than city voters (79 percent vs. 44 percent). Southern suburbanites are the most staunchly Republican, besting their non-South peers by about 9 percent in their likelihood of voting Republican.

The strong residential (suburban vs. city) and regional (non-South vs. South) distinctions in voting behavior present in the 1980 elections diminish for the past three presidential contests. Taking the 1992 to 2000 data as a whole, there is little obvious regional variance to the recent pro-Democratic trend in the suburbs. After controlling for a host ofdemographic and attitudinal factors, in neither the South nor the North are suburban voters any more likely to vote Republican than are their respective counterparts living in cities. Whereas in the 1980s suburban southerners were the most likely to vote Republican, from 1992 to 2000 the suburban coefficient for southern voters is actually positive pro-Democratic although sta- tistically insignificant (D < Sol).

Based on the results from Table 4, it is clear that the Republican advantage among suburban voters relative to city voters ends with the advent of the Clinton years. Table 4 thus provides additional strong evidence in favor of the initial hypothesis that suburban voters moved from a core Republican to a highly competitive voting group during the 1990s. As with the descriptive statistics, however, Table 4’s multivariate analysis does not provide

TABL

E 3

Perc

enta

ge o

f Rep

ublic

an a

nd D

emoc

ratic

Pre

side

ntia

l Vot

e ac

cord

ing

to R

esid

entia

l Loc

atio

n, 1

980-

96

Catef

oty

Reag

an m

inus

M

argi

n Re

agan

min

us

Mar

gin

Bush

min

us

Mar

gn

Bush

min

us

Mar

gn

Dol

e min

us

Mar

gin

Carte

r, 19

80

1980

M

onda

k, 1

984

1984

Du

kaki

s, 19

88

1988

Cl

into

n, 1

992

1992

Cl

into

n, 1

996

1996

Plac

e' 36

- 5

3 -1

7 41

- 5

9 -1

8 41

- 5

8 -1

7 29

- 5

8 -2

9 25

- 6

8 -4

3 N

on-S

outh

citi

es

38 - 5

2 -1

4 40

- 6

0 -2

0 38

- 6

0 -2

2 24

- 6

3 -3

9

23 - 7

0 -4

7 So

uthe

rn ci

ties

4 - 9

4 -9

0 44

- 5

6 -1

2 49

- 5

0 -1

44

- 4

0 +4

39

-56

-17

Subu

rbs'

55-3

5 +2

0 60

- 3

9 +2

1 56

- 4

3 +1

3 39

- 4

1 -2

42

- 4

7 -5

N

on-S

outh

subu

rbs

56-3

4 +2

2 60

- 4

0 +2

0 54

- 4

5 +9

37

- 4

1 -4

41

- 4

8 -7

So

uthe

rn su

burb

s 50

-40

+10

67 - 3

3 +3

4 60

- 3

9 +2

1

43 - 4

1 +2

49

- 4

4 +5

c..

b iti

es

~~~~

~

Sour

ce: D

ata

com

pile

d by

aut

hors

from

the

follo

win

g exi

t pol

ls: C

BS/T

he N

ew Y

ork

Tim

es 1

980 e

xit p

oll (

ICPS

R#

7812

); A

BC

New

s gen

eral

ele

ctio

n ex

it su

rvey

s, 19

84 (I

CPS

R#

8416

); AB

C N

ews g

ener

al el

ectio

n ex

it po

ll, 1

988 (

ICPS

R# 9

1 18)

; Vot

er R

esea

rch a

nd S

urve

ys ge

nera

l ele

ctio

n exi

t pol

ls, 1

992 (

ICPS

R#

6102

); an

d V

oter

New

s Ser

vice

gene

ral e

lec-

tio

n ex

it po

lls, 1

996

(IC

PSR

# 69

89).

Not

e: A

ll da

ta w

ere

wei

ghte

d fo

r ana

lysis

. The

pre

siden

tial v

ote

is fo

r the

per

cent

age

won

out

of t

he v

otes

talli

ed a

mon

g al

l can

dida

tes.

a. W

ith re

spec

t to

regi

on, i

n 19

80 th

e sta

tes c

ompo

sing

the S

outh

coul

d no

t be

dete

rmin

ed d

ue to

the

abse

nce o

f a va

riabl

e fo

r sta

tes (

only

a re

gion

var

iabl

e ex

isted

in th

e 19

80 ex

it po

ll). F

or a

ll ot

her e

lect

ions

, the

Sou

th is

com

prise

d of

the

elev

en st

ates

of t

he fo

rmer

Con

fede

racy

(Ala

bam

a, A

rkan

sas,

Flor

ida,

Geo

rgia

, Lou

isian

a, M

ississ

ippi

, Nor

th C

arol

ina,

So

uth

Car

olin

a, T

enne

ssee

, Tex

as, a

nd V

irgin

ia).

b. In

198

0, ci

ties a

re p

lace

s with

a p

opul

atio

n of

mor

e th

an 2

50,0

00. F

or a

ll ot

her e

lect

ions

, citi

es ar

e pla

ces w

ith a

pop

ulat

ion

of m

ore

than

500

,000

. c.

Each

exit

poll

has a

dist

inct

cate

gory

for s

ubur

bs. F

or 1

988 o

nly,

the c

odeb

ook

did

not d

ocum

ent t

he ca

tego

ries f

or re

siden

tial l

ocat

ion.

We c

heck

ed th

e fre

quen

cies

for t

he ca

tego

- rie

s and

ran

a cro

ss ta

bula

tion

with

pre

siden

tial v

ote t

o de

term

ine w

hich

cat

egor

y on

the

resid

entia

l loc

atio

n va

riabl

e w

as fo

r sub

urbs

and

citie

s (w

e bel

ieve

cate

gory

3 is

for s

ubur

bs

and

cate

gory

6 is

for c

ities

).


TABLE 4 Logistic Regression Models of Presidential Voting

1980to 1988, 1980 to 1988, 1992 to 2000, 1992 to 2000, Non-South south Non-South South

Dqendent Variablea CoeJkient SE Coeficient SE CoeJicient SE Coeficicnt SE


Party identification Democratic Republican

African American

Less than high school through post p d u a t e

Race

Education

Union status

Religion Union household

Catholic Jewish

18 and older Gender


Married Family income (percentile)

Constant

Age

-0.390** .162 -0.245 .186

2.048**** ,196 -1.550**'* ,216

1.532**** .337

0.015 .044

0.744**** ,143

-0.018 ,137 0.409 ,366

0.007 ,004

0.331*** .128

-0.003 ,141

-0.074 .071 -1.239*** .416

TI I80 Log ratio x1 1,264 Pseudo R' ,428

-1.092'** -0.848"*'

2.137**** -1.637'**'

2.046***n

0.052

-0.179

-0.186 0.453

0.005

-0.128

0.039

-0.383*** -0.071

748 479

.466

.346

.318

,360 ,445

,359

.074

.327

.374 243

,007

,223

,256

.I37

.730

-0.045 ,168 -0.278 ,184

1.928'*** .206 -1.614**** ,221

1.683**** .372

0.090** .045

0.234 .156

0.052 .139 0.941** .461

0.012*** .004

0.296** ,131

-0.425*** .147

-0.045 ,077 -1.243"' ,433

1,958 1,133

.417

0.225 .335 -0.024 .323

2.242**** .371 -1.505**** .384

2.865**** .448

0.064

0.131

-0.414 1.846

-0.001

0.317

-0.437

-0.111 -0.742

756 542

.519

,079

,395

.345 ,953

,007

.235

272

.133

.735

Source: National Election Study cumulative file, 1952 to 2000. a. The dependent variable is 1 for Democratic presidential vote and 0 for Republican or major third party candidate (Anderson in 1980; Perot in 1992 and 1996). **p I .05, two-tailed. ***p 2 .01, two-tailed. ****p I .001, two-tailed.

much support for the second hypothesis-that the GOP's suburban decline is primarily driven by nonsouthern suburban voters. Indeed, when one couples these findings with a simple review of statewide votes in the South for 1992 and 1996, there is considerable cir- cumstantial evidence of a significant shift (perhaps temporary) toward the Democratic Party among southern suburbanites.12

12. In 1992, Clinton won in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee-amounting to 27 percent of the South's electoral votes (391147). In 1996, he won in Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Florida-accounting for 35 percent ofthe South's electoral votes (511147). Clinton's electoral college performance in 1996 belies a remarkable feat-for the first time in twenty years, since native son Jimmy Carter in 1976, a Democratic candidate actually received a bare-bones plurality ofthe southern popular vote (12,132,902~s. Dole's 12,108,375 votes, o r462 percent vs. 46.1 percent) (Lamis 1999,4748).


The story may not be so straightforward, though. It is at least plausible that the increase in the southern Democratic vote in 1992 and 1996 was due to the politics, personality, and native son status of Bill Clinton. If so, one might see the anticipated southern versus nonsouthern split in the suburban vote finally emerge in the 2000 e1ecti0n.l~ To test this pos- sibility, Table 5 presents a stand-alone logistic regression model ofthe 2000 presidential vote. In accord with the second hypothesis, we suspect that-absent a Clinton effect in the South and knowing that Bush carried every southern state in 2000-southern suburban voters in 2000 were much more likely to vote Republican than were non-South suburbanite^.'^ In Table 5, the coefficient for our variable of interest (South and suburban) supports this expectation and our second hypothe~is.’~ Although the variable barely fails to attain significance at the traditional level (p < .062), we think this is an artifact of the model’s relatively small sample size (n=457).16 To get a sense ofthe substantive difference in voter preference among southern suburban voters and nonsouthern suburban voters, we can derive the probability for each type of respondent voting Republican while holding all the other variables in the model at their means. Using this method, we find that suburban southerners have a 74 percent likelihood of voting Republican, whereas suburban northerners have only a 38 percent probability of voting Republican in the 2000 presidential election (a thirty-six-point difference).

Taken in their entirety, the data indicate that southern suburbanites have not moved away from the GOP in quite the same way as nonsouthern suburbanites. The descriptive data show that the magnitude of change in suburban voter preferences from 1988 to 1996 was at least as dramatic in the South as in the North but that southern suburbanites began to drift back to the Republicans in 1996 and 2000. The descriptive and multivariate data suggest that 2000 is a particularly critical election17-the differences between southern and northern suburbs grow, with the pro-Republican tendency of suburbia reemerging only in the South. The political appeal of Bill Clinton in the southern suburbs did not transfer to A1 Gore.

Politics versus Demography: Explaining Change in Suburbia

Perhaps the most obvious and pertinent question to arise from these analyses is this: Why is there no longer a difference (controlling for the other variables in our models) in the

13. Al Gore was, ofcourse, a native son of the South. Still, unlike Clinton, he grew up in Washington, DC, and never held statewide office in Tennessee.

14. Commenting on the 2000 presidential election, Charlie Cook notes that “Bush’s scant two-point victory in suburbs this year was driven by carrying the Southern suburbs by 20 points, while losing non-Southern suburbs by about 15 points” (Barone, Cohen, and Cook 2001,47).

15. We ran a model for 1992 to 2000 that included a region dummy (South = 1, non-South = 0 ) and in all other respects was the same as the model in Table 5. The South dummy was properly signed (negative) but highly insignificant with a p value of ,745. We then ran the model with an interaction for South and suburban (South x Suburban), and to our surprise, the coefficient was positive but very insignificant QI < .946).

16. In the 2000 American National Election Study, the urbanism variable had to be constructed from VAR 000093 (belt code - interview location). The city variable was constructed from 1 =central cities (sixlargest) and 2 = central cities (less than two million persons). The suburban variable was constructed from 3 =suburb of six largest cities and 4 =suburb ofall other cities. And the rural variable was constructed from 5 =adjacent areas and 6 = outly- ing areas. The sample size problem is due to the sampling techniques used for the 2000 American National Election Study, as about halfofthe respondents were interviewed via the telephone, and for these cases (n = 801) the urbanism variable (city, suburb, or rural small town) was not established.

17. Our apologies to Key and Burnham.

McKee, Shaw / SUBURBAN VOTING 1 141

TABLE 5 Logistic Regression Model of Presidential Voting

2000 Presidential Eleciion

Dependent GriabL? Coefficient SE


South

South x Suburban

Democratic Republican

Race African American

Education Less than high school through postgraduate

Union status Union household

Religion Catholic Jewish

18 and older Gender


Married Family income (percentile) Constant

Region

Region and residential location

Party identification

Age

n ~ o g ratio x2 Pseudo R2

0.111 -0.768*

-0.026

-1.568*

1.846"** -2.324"**

1.716*"

0.226*

0.156

-0.178 1.638

0.008

0.584"

-0.347 -0.083" -0.496

457 341"""

.543

0.437 0.435

0.462

0.840

0.512 0.538

0.757

0.116

0.423

0.338 1.347

0.010

0.315

0.346 0.049 0.984

Source: National Election Study, 2000. a. For the dependent variable, Democrat = 1 and Republican = 0. "p 2 . lo, two-tailed. ""p < .05, two-tailed. "*"p 5 .01, two-tailed.

voting preferences of suburban and city voters? We address this question with our third hypothesis; movement toward Democratic positions and candidates has been driven by the relocation of many minority and white, liberal, urban residents to the suburbs. Although we cannot offer a complete test ofthis hypothesis with the data at hand, we think this claim is at best an insufficient partial explanation.

It is true that since the 1990 census, suburbs have become more racially diverse. According to Frey (2001), "minorities now constitute more than a quarter (27.3 percent) of suburban populations in the nation's largest metropolitan areas, up from 19.3 percent in


TABLE 6 Comparisons between Suburbs and Cities for Race and Housing, 1980 to 2000 Decennial Censuses

I980 1990 2000

Categoly Subxrbs Cities Margin Suburbs Cities Margin Sxburbs Cities Margin

Racea White 86.6 65.2 +21.4 82.2 59.6 +22.6 80.6 60.0 +20.6 Black 6.1 21.4 -15.3 6.9 21.4 -14.5 8.2 21.6 -13.4 Hispanic 5.3 10.4 -5.1 7.6 14.0 -6.4 11.2 19.3 -8.1

Housing Own 71.5 49.5 +22.0 71.0 49.0 +22.0 73.0 50.5 +22.5 Rent 28.5 50.5 -22.0 29.0 51.0 -22.0 27.0 49.5 -22.5

Source: Data are from the State of the Cities Data Systems Web site: http://socds.huduser.org/Census/Census- Home.htm?. In 2000, data for race are from the U.S. Census Bureau, census 2000, Table DP-1, profiles ofgeneral demographic characteristics. Note: The data are confined to the universe of metropolitan areas (not samples). Suburbs are those places located within metropolitan areas but outside the central cities. Cities are those central cities inside metropolitan areas. a. For the race category, Hispanic persons can be of any race. For the 2000 census, white and black are limited to those persons who identify themselves as being of one race only. b. The percentage of persons who own/rent is out of the total number of occupied housing units.

1990” (p. 13). But the growing racial diversity of suburbs is disproportionately attributable to these largest metropolitan areas with populations exceeding half a million persons. If we look at all metropolitan areas for the past three censuses, it is evident that the suburbs have become more racially diversified but at a substantially lower rate than in the largest metropolitan areas. Furthermore, using rates of home ownership as a proxy for wealth, it is reason- able to expect that a reduction in the percentage of suburban homeowners is supportive of a demographic explanation for the movement of suburban voters toward the Democratic Party in the most recent presidential elections. But this is not the case.

Table 6 presents census data on suburban and city residents according to racial composition (white, black, and Hispanic) and housing (rent or own) for 1980, 1990, and 2000. Based on the data in Table 6, the growing racial diversification of the suburban population is not remarkable, at least not enough to convince us that minority gains in the suburbs account for the stalemate in the two-party vote among suburban voters in the past two elections. And with respect to housing, contrary to our expectations, since the 1980s the percentage ofhome owners in the suburbs has experienced a slight increase. As for the claim that the migration of white, liberal, urban residents to the suburbs has caused the pro-Democratic vote shift, we find little empirical reason to think that this migration is sufficiently large to cause such an aggregate change.

We are left with a tentative answer that comes closest to the alternative explanation we offered to counter the third hypothesis; we think Democratic gains in suburbia are primarily due to policy positions taken by the parties.

McKee, Shaw / SUBURBAN VOTING 1 143

Discussion

So what can we can conclude about the voting behavior of suburbanites? Based on our findings, suburban voters have historically (1952-2000) shown a greater propensity to vote Republican in presidential elections than city dwellers, even after controlling for party identification and other strong predictors of vote choice. This proclivity to vote Republican among suburban voters was most pronounced during the Reagan years and the first Bush presidency. Dividing the electorate by region, southern suburban voters are the most loyal Republican voters in the 1980s. We see, however, that the voting behavior of suburbanites is dynamic, as the Clinton years wipe out the disparity in voter preference between suburban and city voters. Furthermore, what is most striking is the change among southern suburban voters-the most loyal Republican electorate in the 1990s is indistinguishable from their city counterparts with respect to vote choice from 1992 to 2000.

As it was in most other respects, we find the 2000 presidential election to be especially interesting. By isolating this most recent presidential contest, we find evidence for the reemergence of a regional difference in voting behavior, with southern suburbanites more likely to vote Republican than suburban voters residing in the non-South. Gore’s losses in Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Missouri, and (of course) Florida would not have occurred if he had held onto even a large portion ofClinton’s gains from the 1980s in these states’ suburbs-or if he had done as well in the southern as he did in the northern suburbs.

But was it possible for Gore to have done better with southem suburban voters? More to the point, could he have benefited from closer association with Clinton in appealing to these voters? Common sense would seem to suggest yes. Clinton headed the Democratic ticket as the party’s share of the suburban vote, in both the South and North, skyrocketed. Certainly, pundits and scholars have berated Gore for failing to deploy Clinton more in Arkansas and Missouri, where Clinton stumped only lightly and where increased support among core Democratic constituencies might have made the difference. But Gore opera- tives-most notably pollster Stanley Greenberg-insist that all available survey data told them that Clinton was a liability with suburban voters, particularly in the southern border states. Bush strategists-including pollster Matthew Dowd-have said they found similar evidence in their surveys. Furthermore, Clinton’s share of the suburban vote in the South did not rise commensurate with his national numbers in 1996. Even before the Lewinsky affair and impeachment, it seems the South may have been turning on him (much to Gore’s dismay).

What, then, can we say about 2004 and beyond? Ifpolitics, personalities, and position- ing are largely responsible for suburban voting dynamics, we are in a much weaker position when it comes to predicting the future. George W. Bush might be able to ride national confi- dence in his handling of September 11 th to a solid victory in northern suburbs, temporarily restoring the Republican advantage there. On the other side ofthe ledger, a Democratic candidate like Senator John Edwards (NC) might be able to make inroads with southern suburbanites that rival those Clinton cobbled together in 1992. For present purposes, let us conclude with two observations about the likely future of suburban presidential voting: (1)


the factors that led to GOP dominance of the suburbs have dissipated so that political context-local and national-is likely to determine outcomes, and (2) this context varies so dramatically by region that we would be surprised if suburban voting patterns do not vary more significantly in the future than they did in the 1990s.

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Documents

Suburban Voting in Presidential Elections