Pennsylvania’s Bucks County: Ultimate Suburban Bellwether

RealClearPolitics ^ | September 11, 2020 | Charles McElwe

[CheshireTheCat]

...In that year’s presidential election, Bucks’s swing voters helped deliver the state to then-vice president George H. W. Bush over Michael Dukakis, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts. Bush became the last Republican to win the county.

And yet, in 2016, Hillary Clinton carried Bucks by fewer than 2,700 votes...This narrow margin was a forgotten factor in Trump’s statewide victory by about 44,000 votes. “Bucks was a disaster,” one Democratic media strategist told the Inquirer. In a county where Democrats have outnumbered Republicans since 2008, Clinton’s underperformance indicated that Bucks remained an unpredictable battleground. This year, suburban Philadelphia is undoubtedly Joe Biden’s protectorate, but pockets of silent Trump voters still live in the region -- especially in Bucks, a microcosm of America’s political realignment.

... In Lower Bucks, working-class Democrats support Trump. These Obama-to-Trump voters are descended from Catholic Philadelphians who, after World War II, settled in places like Levittown -- a symbol of 50s-era suburban growth -- to work in the area’s industrial base. They resent their now decades-long decline, and they see Trump as a defender of their economic interests.

Meanwhile, Central Bucks’s wealthy, congested townships are the site of a suburban revolt dating to the 2006 midterms, when voters rejected Republicans over the Iraq war. These upper-middle-class communities are made up of moderate Republicans and progressive Democrats who share a contempt for Trump. They favor down-ballot Democrats at the polls.

Finally, less populous Upper Bucks -- a mix of suburban and agricultural settings -- trends Republican. Upper Bucks, more an extension of the Lehigh Valley, is culturally disconnected from Philadelphia. Overall, Upper Bucks’s lifelong Republicans and Lower Bucks’s disillusioned Democrats comprise Trump’s voting base...Indeed, a recent Pew survey found that among registered voters, the issue of violent crime ranks nearly as important as the coronavirus....

[lightman]

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