Kamala Harris is banking on suburban voters to reject Donald Trump again, and Republicans believe the former president's strategy might be driving those voters away.
The vice president's aides believe they will improve on president Joe Biden's performance with suburban voters in 2020, as college-educated voters and women turn away from the Jan. 6 riot and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and Harris has hosted town hall events in swing state suburbs featuring disaffected Republicans and highlighting abortion rights, reported Politico.
“The suburbs — that’s the whole deal,” said North Carolina state Sen. Lisa Grafstein. “That’s where the votes are for her.”
Republicans are gaining ground with blue-collar voters in smaller towns, while Democrats have made inroads with college-educated men and women in the growing and diversifying suburbs of cities like Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia, which helped fuel their victories in 2018 and 2020.
“College-educated voters were reliably Republican for decades, but now they’re turning away from Trump, from his toxicity,” said Jim Messina, who led Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. “It started in 2018, but then Dobbs put a flame to the gas."
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Biden won the suburbs by about 2 percentage points in 2020, according to exit polls, while Hillary Clinton lost them in 2016, and the president focused his re-election bid on attracting Republicans weary of Trump before stepping aside for Harris, who has doubled down on that strategy in her own campaign.
“Not only do you have Democratic suburban women who are turning out in higher numbers, but there’s also moderate, sane women who the Republican Party has moved away from — just look at where Nikki Haley did well,” said Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. “Harris is making the case to those women that you have a place in this future.”
Trump, on the other hand, has gambled his own re-election bid on turning out low-propensity voters, especially younger men – but Republican strategists carries risks.
“The Trump campaign is going overboard to win over and mobilize men, exacerbating the divide, and pushing women in the other direction,” said a Republican operative in Michigan. “But I think the socioeconomic and education realignment of the parties require Harris to do even better in the suburbs because of that.”
Biden improved on Clinton's performance in suburbs like Oakland County, Michigan, which McMorrow represents, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and those gains helped carry him to victory over Trump four years ago and quite likely push Harris over the top.
“I don’t think those disaffected Republicans in the suburbs, specifically talking about Bucks County, are now so unsatisfied with Biden and Kamala that they’re going to vote Trump – that’s just not going to happen,” said Mike Conallen, former chief of staff to GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican who represents suburban Philadelphia’s Bucks County. “If anything, they’re going further away from Trump because of Jan. 6, because of ‘Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs,’ because of Roe v. Wade.”