The other warning Republicans should heed from this year’s elections – By Christian Paz (VOX) / Nov 11, 2023
Republicans don’t seem to know how to stop bleeding support from the suburbs.
The victories Democrats racked up on Tuesday night spanned safe blue states, Trump country, and one-time battlegrounds: A popular governor was re-elected in Kentucky; Virginia Democrats flipped control of the state house and kept their majority in the state senate; Democrats reversed GOP gains in New Jersey’s legislature; Pennsylvania voters delivered a Democratic romp in statewide contests; and the liberal positions won big in Ohio’s two ballot measures to enshrine the right to an abortion and to legalize marijuana.
Post-election vote totals show that much of that success was due to a very specific kind of American: affluent, college-educated voters who are likely to live in the suburbs of metropolitan areas. In Kentucky, that means the areas in and around Louisville, where vote totals from the secretary of state’s office show that Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear improved his 2019 margins by nearly 10 percentage points; the counties in and around Lexington, where he improved by an average of 9 points; and in the three northern counties that sit across the state line from Cincinnati, Ohio, where vote totals show he improved by an average of 3 points.
Ohio was a similar story: The “Yes” vote on Issue 1, which protects reproductive rights, saw its biggest support come from major urban centers and their suburbs, where it performed better than the Democratic Senate nominee in last year’s elections. Vote totals tallied by the New York Times show the “Yes” vote performing 6 points better in and around Cleveland, 11 points better in neighboring Lorain County, and 8 points better in nearby Summit County. It also won the vote outright in five other neighboring counties that Democrats lost last year.
CONTINUE > https://www.vox.com/politics/23955909/election-results-2023-abortion-republicans-suburban-vote
