Obama Chances in Suburbs Rest on Population Shift (Update2)
By Heidi Przybyla
Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- A boundary runs just west of Dulles International Airport in Virginia that you won't find on any map. It's a line that may mark the political divide that determines whether Barack Obama or John McCain wins the White House.
The airport straddles Loudoun and Fairfax counties, suburbs and exurbs of Washington where a surge of working professionals and Asian and Hispanic immigrants have transformed the area's once predictably Republican politics.
That transformation is replaying itself across the country: the ring around Columbus, Ohio; the outskirts of Denver; Reno and Clark County, Nevada; Jefferson County, near St. Louis; Tampa, Florida. In every case, the trend is working to Democratic nominee Obama's benefit, helping explain his commanding lead over Republican McCain in estimates of electoral votes less than a week from the Nov. 4 election.
``In many ways, these two candidates are the bookends of the demographic, racial transformation that's going on in the United States,'' Bill Frey, a senior fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said at a forum last week.
Nowhere is the trend clearer than in the area around Dulles. In 2004, Democrat John Kerry won Fairfax County, which hadn't gone Democratic in 40 years. While Republican George W. Bush won Loudoun by 12 percentage points, Democratic leanings have continued to spread westward in the four years since: This year the Obama camp aims to run almost even with Arizona Senator McCain, 72, in Loudoun.
From South to North
``They're turning it from the northern end of the old Confederacy to the southern end of the Northeast corridor,'' said Rhodes Cook, publisher of a non-partisan newsletter that tracks voting trends.
From 2000 to 2006, the population in Loudoun increased 59 percent, compared with 8 percent growth for all of Virginia. Hispanics increased by 13 percent and Asians by 12 percent, according to U.S. Census data. The percentage of those with at least a college degree increased 47 percent, compared with 30 percent statewide.
If Leesburg, the area west of Dulles airport, goes Democratic, ``Barack Obama is likely to win the election, just based on that single piece of information,'' said Robert Lang, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria, Virginia. ``If you take up too much of the metropolitan vote, there's not enough rural voters left'' for Republicans to win, he said.
`Mega Trends'
Much of the 47-year-old Illinois senator's advantage in national polls is shaped by voter anxiety over the economy. Other factors may be at work as well. What Frey called demographic ``mega trends'' -- or major changes in voting populations -- also are recasting the electorate.
While the economy looms large, ``we need to keep an eye out on these mega trends and not be too blinded by the issue aspect'' of the election, said Frey,
These trends were evident in recent statewide elections in Virginia. In 2006, Governor Tim Kaine and Senator James Webb, both Democrats, won Loudoun County in addition to Fairfax.
It's an abrupt shift. In 2004, Bush's victory was largely attributed to his ability to win substantial margins in growing exurban and rural areas. He had won over a demographic group that New York Times columnist David Brooks labeled ``Patio Man,'' typically a married male who lives in the exurban areas and holds culturally conservative values.
Immigrants
New citizens also are shifting political allegiances. Bush received 44 percent of support from Hispanic voters in 2004, leading his party to predict that this growing segment could help sustain a Republican majority for decades.
Instead, recent data suggest these voters are now leaning Democratic. Hispanics voted 69 percent to 30 percent Democratic in the 2006 congressional elections. Given that minority voters account for 21 percent of the electorate today, up from 15 percent in 1990, that gulf is even more troubling for Republicans.
Their votes could be pivotal in some Sun Belt states like Nevada, which has recorded 52,000 new immigrant and Latino registrations since February, according to the We Are America Alliance, a Washington-based immigrant and minority rights group. That's more than twice Bush's 2004 victory margin. Bush also won New Mexico by less than 6,000 votes in 2004, and there are 40,000 new registrations there.
Web Sites
Nonpartisan Web sites such as RealClearPolitics.com and Politico.com project that Obama may win more than 300 Electoral College votes, including states such as Virginia, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico that Bush won in 2004. A candidate must win 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.
Taken together these shifts in states that Bush won in 2004 help explain why Obama is leading McCain in several estimates of the current Electoral College count, including those compiled by nonpartisan websites such as RealClearPolitics.com.
The final ``mega'' demographic trend is the rise of a new generation of voters -- the so-called millennials -- whose political leanings have been shaped by the last two presidencies.
History shows a strong relationship between the popularity of the presidents in power and the political leanings of the generations who came of age during their administrations, said Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center in Washington.
Two Presidents
The millennials ``have two presidents they can remember in their adulthood,'' Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, Keeter said at the Brookings forum. ``This has been very good for the Democratic brand with this age group.''
Another reason this group is moving toward the Democratic Party may be that the percentage of secular voters is expanding rapidly while the enthusiasm gap between white evangelicals and other groups has narrowed significantly, according to Bill Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings. The percentage of secular voters more than doubled during the 1990s to 15 percent of the population, and it's even higher among young voters.
Still, some Republicans said analysts are overstating the political implications of these demographic shifts.
``As soon as these young people get away from communal living and get married with children they usually take a different view on life,'' said John Morgan, a Republican consultant and demographer.
To contact the reporter on this story: Heidi Przybyla in Virginia at hprzybyla@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: October 28, 2008 10:35 EDT |
