Oh, yes, surely we will still be hearing liberally from Trump voters whose only regret is their hero's failure thus far to actually drop someone on 5th Avenue. But even Washington journalists seem to have tired of them a bit. And just in time for the midterms, we are starting to meet a new crop of voters journalists just can't get enough of: suburban women.
They are of interest, of course, not only because the election outcome might turn on them, but also because they appear to be moving as a bloc toward Democrats. The question is whether their midterm votes will represent a one-time shift or an actual evolution. As noted in a lengthy Buzzfeed article interviewing suburban women in Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania:
The question isn’t so much if these voters will leave Republicans this year, but whether the shift is permanent — whether Republicans have, in the space of a few years, lost a demographic that they once relied on.
Journalist Ronald Brownstein wondered in The Atlantic whether the new Democratic converts might serve as the long-term antidote to the white working-class men who abandoned Democrats for Trump in 2016. "In that way," he wrote, "2018 could complete the geographic realignment that began in 2010, cementing Democratic control inside the major metropolitan areas and reaffirming Republican dominance beyond them."
What is interesting and perhaps not so obvious is the variety of voters in this relatively small niche. Some were simply passive Democratic voters who got really activated and started organizing and even running. Others were Democratic leaners or Republican leaners who often purposely split their tickets to vote for divided government. Still others were flat-out GOP voters who say they won't go near Republicans this cycle.
“Now I’m Democratic. I’ve never been before,” said Bobbie, a retired woman spending a morning browsing the shops of Birmingham, Michigan, an idyllic suburb of Detroit. “But I care about our Constitution.” She’s split tickets between Republicans and Democrats before, she said, but now? “Absolutely not. I don’t see myself voting for any of them.”
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Kris Miner, a left-leaning Minnesotan who voted for GOP Rep. Erik Paulsen (MN-03) in 2016, attended her first political march ever—the National Women's March—following Trump's election. She was hopeful Paulsen would serve as a moderating force on Trump but grew "horrified" as Paulsen rubber stamped all of Trump's policies. Now Miner's volunteering for Paulsen's Democratic opponent Dean Phillips and she's through splitting tickets, even for a moderate GOP female state senator she likes quite a bit. "This time, I feel like there’s too much at stake, " Miner told Buzzfeed. "We can’t afford to have even a moderate in office, even though I know she’s a good person.”
At a postcard-writing party she hosted at her home in Eden Prairie for Phillips this summer, some 30 people showed up. Twelve, she said, had been one-time Paulsen voters.
Those female flippers and newly activated Democrats could well provide the margin three weeks from now that helps put Democrats back in control of the House. In a Washington Post/Schar School survey of 59 House battleground races nationwide, college-educated white women now prefer Democrats by nearly 30 points. In 2016, the same demographic voted for Hillary Clinton by just 6 points.
If those suburban women and once reliable GOP voters end up voting for Democrats by high double-digit margins, Republicans could have a serious long-term problem on their hands. The question will be whether the new converts are really just voting anti-Trump or whether they decide their values are actually more in alignment with the Democratic party. Whatever the case, Trump has remade the GOP in his image and whatever becomes of him, Republicans will spend a long time trying to shake the image of misogyny they’ve embraced with open arms under his leadership.