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The GOP's Suburban Dilemma The GOP’s Suburban Dilemma Sean Trende JULY 2021 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE Executive Summary or years, Republicans thought of their party as a In the United States, the Republican Party is Fthree-legged stool, joining social, economic, and in the midst of a transition from a party based in foreign policy conservatives. There was something to the suburbs to a party based in rural areas. The this, and indeed parties can be looked at by the ideo- growing urban-suburban-rural divide increasingly logical components. This is not, however, the only way explains American politics. We would expect an to examine and understand parties. Instead, they can urban county today to be around seven points more be thought of as coalitions of different demographic Democratic than a demographically identical rural groups. Exploring how these groupings shift over time county would be. can provide clues and insights to understanding why This report establishes this phenomenon and they behave in a particular way and what their future explores its genesis. Future installments will examine may look like. the consequences of this for party coalitions. 1 The GOP’s Suburban Dilemma Sean Trende uring the late 2000s, as George W. Bush’s pop- It’s a little-known fact that people who did not own Dularity plummeted and nostalgia for President guns cast similar shares of votes for Republicans Ronald Reagan hit its peak in the wake of Reagan’s pass- and Democrats in different Senate races in 2018. ing, the GOP’s political coalition was commonly called Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) won 73 percent of the “three-legged stool.” The trope was so popular the non-gun-owning vote, while Sen. Heidi Heitkamp that presidential aspirant Mitt Romney frequently fea- (D-ND) took 63 percent of the vote from non–gun tured a three-legged chair in his stump speeches as he owners.2 The difference is in composition: Two-thirds sought the 2008 Republican nomination for president, of the North Dakota electorate reported owning guns, claiming to be the only candidate who could reunite while two-thirds of the New York electorate reported the social, economic, and foreign policy conservatives not owning a gun. Similar relationships arise with the who supposedly made up the Reagan coalition.1 size of a state’s White evangelical population. There was some truth to this view of the party. This report, however, is concerned with the demo- After all, Reagan was clearly a social, fiscal, and foreign graphic composition of the Republican electorate. policy conservative, possibly the only such Republi- The thesis is that Trump’s ascension in the Republi- can president since those terms became meaningful. can Party does elevate the Republican Party’s chances It’s also clearly true that some of the challenges that of success in some states, most obviously in the conservatism faces today stem from the difficulties Upper Midwest. This will surprise few readers, given inherent in uniting these groups. Libertarian-minded his success there in 2016 and how close he came to fiscal conservatives are often wary of social conserva- winning in 2020. At the same time, though, he truly tives, especially those with religious orientations. For- endangers the Republican Party’s chances in other eign policy conservatives frequently find themselves states, especially in the Sunbelt. This can be explored at loggerheads with social conservatives, especially in through multiple angles, but this report is ultimately the Donald Trump era, while the fiscal conservatives concerned with urbanicity as a predictor for Republi- sometimes blanch at the level of military spending can success or failure. that the foreign policy conservatives demand. Keep- This argument will be made over four reports. This ing these groups together was relatively easy in the first report focuses on the history of the Republican era of the threat of “godless Communism”; hawks coalition and its modern development. It echoes, were kept in line by the threat, social conservatives refines, and updates arguments made in my 2012 by the godlessness, and economic conservatives by book, The Lost Majority: Why the Future of Govern- the Communism. It is likely not accidental that the ment Is Up for Grabs—and Who Will Take It.3 It traces Soviet Union’s collapse coincided with the end of the development of the Republican coalition and the large Republican wins in the popular vote in the ensu- emerging urban-rural divide. The second report looks ing election. at how this has played out, using Texas and Ohio as There are other ways of thinking about the Repub- test cases for the strengths and weaknesses of the lican political coalition’s development over time. For emerging Republican coalition. The third report looks example, one could look at its ideological composition. at a potential future for the post-Trump Republican 2 THE GOP’S SUBURBAN DILEMMA SEAN TRENDE Party, while the fourth examines problems on the But the Democrats’ dominance began to fade in Democratic side of the ledger. the 1930s. FDR’s wins in 1932 and 1936 proved that Andrew Jackson’s party was no longer dependent on the South to win. Moreover, where would the South The Development of the Modern go? The GOP was still the party of civil rights, after all. GOP Coalition FDR embarked on an ill-considered purge of South- ern Democratic senators in the wake of his 1936 land- The modern Republican Party can be seen as a coali- slide victory. All survived, but the message had been tion of four geographic or demographic parts first put sent that the marriage of conservatism and the Dem- together during the Dwight Eisenhower years. Over ocrats was beginning to fray. Moreover, FDR’s threats a traditional Republican base of business owners and proved empty, which caused problems for him down “Main Street Republicans” in the Midwest and on the the road.9 Great Plains, postwar Republican candidates added In the wake of the 1938 midterm election, conser- three constituencies: the South, the suburbs, and the vative Southerners joined ranks with conservative White working class. This report discusses the rise of Republicans in the North to block most New Deal that coalition, foreshadows the forces that are now legislation. By 1942, the average Southern Democrat working to unwind it, and hints at what might arrive was positioned roughly in the middle of Republi- to take its place. cans and Northern Democrats when voting on eco- nomic issues. In fact, many were effectively voting like Republicans by then. The Republican position on The South civil rights and the fact that the stock market crash and even the Civil War itself were living memories for In 1936, the Republican Party was devastated in a many Southerners kept these members in the Demo- way that few American parties have ever been. In the cratic coalition.10 aftermath of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (FDR) reelec- A combination of factors ultimately broke South- tion, Republicans were reduced to just 89 seats in erners away from the Democratic Party. First, the the House and 17 in the Senate; there were almost as South became increasingly wealthy, as what had pre- many Democratic senators as there were Republican viously been sleepy hamlets grew, almost overnight, House members.4 Yet within two years, the Repub- into cities. As the Democratic Party became increas- lican Party had bounced back enough that the New ingly liberal on economic issues, wealthy voters fol- Deal was effectively over.5 Within six years, it had won lowed suit. Samuel Lubell, who made a career out the popular vote for Congress, and within 10 years, it of predicting elections by interviewing voters across had won control of Congress.6 Six years later, Repub- the country, noticed that wealthy denizens of Hous- licans held control of Congress and the presidency.7 ton had gone solidly for FDR in 1936, giving him How did this happen? It was due to various por- 57 percent of the vote. By 1944, FDR had received just tions of the New Deal coalition splintering off over 18 percent of the vote among this group. (The poorest FDR’s final term. Perhaps the most surprising portion residents continually gave him more than 85 percent was the American South. Since the end of Reconstruc- of the vote.) tion, the South had been the core of the Democratic Second, the parties changed on civil rights. One coalition. Democratic dominance in the region was so may think of the relationship between Southerners thorough that in 1924, Sen. Coleman Blease (D-SC) and the Democratic Party as an unhappy marriage, mocked the 1,123 votes that Calvin Coolidge received in which they stayed together for the kids—the kids in his state by remarking, “I do not know where he got in this case being Jim Crow. In 1948, the Democratic them. I was astonished to know that they were cast Party put support for civil rights in its platform—to and shocked to know that they were counted.”8 torture the analogy, the kids went off to college—and 3 THE GOP’S SUBURBAN DILEMMA SEAN TRENDE at that point Whites who were otherwise closer ideo- Although the White working-class voters who fled logically to Republicans had no reason to stay in the to the suburbs were originally heavily Democratic, Democratic Party. It is not accidental that, eight years they formed the bedrock of the Republican Party from later, Eisenhower won a plurality of the popular vote 1952 onward. While scholars debate whether the sub- in the South. Finally, the in-migration of voters from urbs helped make working-class voters more Republi- the North to the South (coincident with the increased can or whether the voters who moved to the suburbs growth of Southern cities) meant these voters were more Republican to begin with, their lean from imported their Republican voting habits with them.
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